Front Row

Robert Lindsay on his first acting job fifty years ago at the Nortcott Theatre in Devon, in a play which has contemporary resonance: Don Taylor's historical drama The Roses of Eyam, about the village that voluntarily put itself into lockdown during the Great Plague that swept Britain in the mid 17th Century. Director General Tony Hall discusses the BBC’s renewed commitment to the arts with its Culture in Quarantine initiative, and the serious situation currently facing the arts in the this country.How to write a new musical? In the second of a series going behind the scenes in the creation of a musical about the climate crisis called House Fire, Edwina Pitman talks to writer / director Poppy Burton Morgan and composer Ben Toth. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May

Spike Lee’s new film Da 5 Bloods follows four African-American Vietnam veterans who served together in battle, who return to the country and reunite to locate their fallen squad leader. The writer and director discusses the Netflix film and how resonant many of its issues are particularly now, in the week of its release.Dr Daisy Fancourt is leading the UK’s biggest study looking at the impact the coronavirus crisis has had on our mental health. In recent weeks the team has been looking at the effect of participating in arts and crafts on our wellbeing during this turbulent time. She explains the findings. Hope Mirrlees' Paris – A Poem is a modernist masterpiece that is little known today. It was published in 1920, two years before TS Eliot’s The Waste Land - which might well have been influenced by it. A century later Paris - A Poem has been published again. Neil Gaiman, a big fan, and Sandeep Parma, who is working on a biography of Mirrlees, reveal the importance of this lost poem, illustrated by extracts read by Charlotte Rampling and Lambert Wilson.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Dymphna Flynn Studio Manager: John Boland

Michaela Coel, the double-BAFTA winning actor/writer/director of the TV series Chewing Gum, discusses her new show I May Destroy You, a 12-parter telling a story about one young woman’s date rape and her attempt to piece together what happened to her. Yesterday in Bristol the statue of Edward Colston, who made his fortune from slavery, was noosed, pulled from its plinth, dragged and rolled through the streets of Bristol and dumped in the harbour. We hear a personal account from local artist and journalist Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley who was there. Jasmine reflects on the event and its meaning and writer Ekow Eshun, who is chair of the committee that commissions the art that goes on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, further considers the cultural significance of the toppling of the statue, and what should now happen to the remains.Today the shortlist for the UK and Ireland’s only awards to shine a light on funny writing by women - The Comedy Women in Print Prize – has been announced. It’s the award’s second year and the shortlisted stories demonstrate the unique way humour can tackle hard-hitting subjects such as mental health, addiction and gender discrimination. Kirsty is joined by one of the panel of judges, comedian Lolly Adefope.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Simon Richardson Studio Manager Matilda MacariMain image: Michaela Coel as Arabella in BBC1's I May Destroy You series Image credit: BBC/Various Artist Ltd and FALKNA Productions /Natalie Seery

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson continues his weekly live performances from the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, as Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence. Tonight Víkingur plays his own transcription of J.S Bach’s cantata Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54. David Greig talks about his new play Adventures With The Painted People - a first century romcom between a Pict and a Roman - which was to have opened Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season, and has now been adapted for Radio 3, as part of the BBC's Culture in Quarantine project.For our Friday review, we watch El Presidente- a new Amazon Prime comedy drama about the FIFA corruption scandal, scripted by Birdman writer Armando Bó. And Lily King’s novel Writers and Lovers comes with accolades from Elizabeth Strout and Tessa Hadley. What will critics Carl Anka and Alex Clark make of its consideration of grief, love, writing... and waitressing?Following the death of George Floyd there’s been a dramatic increase in sales of books which help explain structural racism. Knights Of - a small publisher specialising in titles tackling prejudice - was facing financial crisis due to the Coronavirus, but now a crowdfunding appeal to help publishers like them has smashed its £100 000 target. Knights Of’s co-founder, Aimee Felone, on publishing during the pandemic and the Inclusive Indies fundraising campaign.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

Director Andrew Patterson joins us to talk about new movie The Vast of Night, the story of a small New Mexico town disturbed by lights in the sky and unidentified radio signals which is a loving homage to the sci-fi TV of the 1950s. The low budget, high concept film, which is Patterson’s directorial debut, is available on Amazon Prime.Writers Timberlake Wertenbaker and Winsome Pinnock talk about how white and black writers engage with race, and the importance and responsibility of white writers to talk about race and racism. Mark Damazer is the newly announced Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation which oversees the management of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize, for fiction in translation. After the Booker judges’ controversial decision in 2019 to split the main award between two authors, Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, he joins us to talk about the Foundation’s plans for the year ahead.It’s the 31st anniversary today of the massacre of thousands of protestors in Tiananmen Square. Writers, musicians and writers, such as Bei Dao, Duo Duo and singer Cui Jian, were involved in the movement for Democracy in China, and Front Row briefly reflects on their role. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

Michael Sheen and David Tennant play themselves in Staged, a new BBC One series of six 15-minute Zoom dramas, in which they play two furloughed actors in lockdown. Comedian and writer Viv Groskop reviews. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, has released a new online portal to facilitate conversations about race and racism in America. Beverly Morgan-Welch, Director of External Affairs at the Museum, discusses the project, Talking About Race.The poets Alemu Tebeje and Chris Beckett, the editors and translators of Songs We Learn from Trees, discuss the very first anthology of Ethiopian poetry to be published in English. With poems written in Amharic over the past two centuries it reveals a rich and various and witty tradition - of boasts, war cries, poems about wealth, famine, religion, politics and love. Main image: David Tennant in Staged Image credit: BBC/GCB Films/Infinity Hill Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager Tim Heffer

As public protests continue nationally and internationally, award-winning American artist Carrie Mae Weems - whose work explores race, identity, and power - joins Front Row to discuss the role of art in response to tragedies such as the death of George Floyd.Liz Lochhead, the former Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, performs a new poem written during the lockdown, called The Spaces Between. How will museums reflect the current crisis in the future? What will they have on display and in their archives to record the way we’re living now? We find out what the Wellcome Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum are collecting. And we conclude our series of specially commissioned introductions to some of the books on the GCSE English literature syllabus with novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman, whose feminist sci fi novel The Power won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2017. So it’s appropriate that tonight she’ll be talking about about HG Wells’ trailblazing science fiction classic The War of the Worlds.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Simon Richardson

Sitting In Limbo is a new BBC drama telling the story of one man’s entanglement with the Windrush scandal where legal migrants, some of whom had lived here for decades, were denied legal rights, threatened with deportation and some were wrongly deported. The drama tells the story of Anthony Bryan who came to the UK from Jamaica with his mother at the age of 8. Gaylene Gould reviews.Joanna Briscoe made her name with Mothers and Other Lovers and Sleep With Me which was adapted by Andrew Davies for ITV. Her new novel is Seduction and is the story of an artist who is hounded by her estranged mother, has a difficult relationship with her own teenage daughter and goes into therapy – falling madly in love with her female therapist. The death of the artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, known as Christo has been announced. Working with his wife Jeanne-Claude, the pair were known for their monumental public works which involved wrapping architectural creation such as the Reichstag - the German Parliament in Berlin, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, and New York’s Central Park. Critic Louisa Buck discusses his work.The Uncertain Kingdom project is an anthology of twenty new short films by twenty directors reflecting contemporary Britain. Kirsty talks to producer Georgia Goggin and director David Proud, whose film Verisimilitude is about a disabled actress who advises an obnoxious star on how to perform with a disability for his latest role. Main image: Patrick Robinson in Sitting in Limbo Image credit: BBC/Left Bank PicturesPresenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own. On the eve of Radio 4’s adaptation of Woolf’s totemic study in the treatment of women across the generations we talk to Indira Varma who stars. The DJ Mr Switch, aka Anthony Culverwell, discusses Gabriel Prokofiev’s classical composition, Concerto for Turntables, released this week. Mr Switch performed it at the BBC Proms in 2011 to great acclaim, and at home at his turntables the DJ explains and demonstrates the art of turntablism.Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson continues his weekly live performances from the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, as Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence. Tonight Víkingur plays Chopin’s Prelude in B Minor, a piece very special to the composer.For Front Row's Friday review, Bong Joon Ho's 2013 film Snowpiercer never had a full cinematic release in this country but won critical acclaim. Now Netflix have produced a new series based on the story. And The Lockdown Plays is a new podcast for charity involving some of the country's top actors and playwrights such as Caryl Churchill and Clint Dyer. Critics Naima Khan and Ryan Gilbey give their verdicts on both.Tomorrow will be Bristol Old Vic’s 254th birthday. Usually anyone living in Bristol can perform on the stage of the oldest theatre in the country on its birthday. This, sadly, has had to now move online. Tom Morris talks about the Bristol Arts Channel, which opens tonight with the streaming of the Bristol Old Vic production of Messiah. The channel involves venues all over the city offering the audience a night out in Bristol. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Social distancing has become one of the key measures for controlling coronavirus, but implementing it is creating an existential threat to arts venues like theatres, museums, galleries, independent music venues and concert halls. With such vastly reduced capacity - as much as 90% - can venues ever make the finances stack up, and what is lost when the audience, and performers, must be so far apart?Despite the restrictions, some venues are starting to find ways of making it work. John Wilson goes to the Wigmore Hall where they're beginning live concerts on Radio 3 next week. Violinist Alina Ibragimova performs in the hall - the first instrument played there in ten weeks - and speaks to John alongside Director of the Wigmore Hall John Gilhooly about what it means to be creating live performance again amidst such huge financial uncertainty.Alan Davey tells us what to expect from this years' Proms.Across Europe some museums and galleries are already open. Christina Haak, deputy director of the Berlin State Museums, which include the Pergamonmuseum, Neues Museum and the Alte Nationalgalerie, tells us what it was like welcoming audiences again. Robert Hastie, Director of Sheffield Theatres, reports on his plans for Shakespeare in the Park this summer, which have the aim of keeping some theatre alive in the city.And Dominique Frazer, who runs the Boileroom indie music venue in Guildford, discusses how social distancing is impossible in their venue which is all about getting close to bands and each other.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins