Front Row

Samira talks to Nigerian American performer, choreographer and writer Okwui Okpokwasili about the UK premiere of Bronx Gothic at London’s Young Vic. How does the piece delve into one woman’s attempt to shake loose memory in a performance at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual installation.Musical acts always used to be the headliners and sole draw for music festivals. Recently we have seen the rise of alternative stages at these events – often including literary events. But what make them different to what you might find at mainstream literature festivals? We speak to Laura Barton who programmes Green Man’s literary space and Colin Midson, the main programmer for Port Eliot Festival’s literary stage. Thirty years ago today the name Tiananmen, which means the Gate of Heavenly Peace, assumed a tragic irony when the (also ironically named) People’s Liberation Army, massacred the crowd of young people peacefully calling for democracy in the Square. We'll look at the role of writers and musicians in creating a milieu in which that demonstration became possible. The actor and writer Daniel York Loh considers how cultural life in China has changed in the intervening 3 decadesAfter 18 years, Apple has announced the end of iTunes. What does the move from downloading to streaming mean to those of us who have been building our iTunes libraries for years and for how people will access music in the future?Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love has sold fifteen million copies around the world and was made into a film with Julia Roberts. Her new novel is City of Girls, the story of a young woman discovering an exhilarating life in a theatre in New York in the summer of 1940. She talks about why she was unafraid of writing about a young woman’s sexual desire and about the dramatic and difficult events in her personal life that shaped the writing of the book.“The biggest thing since the Beatles” has become something of a pop cliché, but in the case of the south Korean boy band BTS it might be justified. This year they became the first group since The Beatles to earn three US Billboard number one albums in less than 12 months and this weekend they’re playing in London. Haekyung Um explains the BTS and K pop phenomenon.Natalia Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist known for her large scale abstract canvases, performance art and textile and theatre design. Ahead of a retrospective of her work at Tate Modern, the show’s curator Natalia Sidlina discusses her unique style and significance today.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson

At the piano, composer Alan Menken discusses his music which led the rebirth of Disney animation with hits such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, which he’s reworked for the new live-action version currently top of the box office. Georgia's state governor has signed legislation banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected (except in reported cases of rape or incest). In response, several major production companies including Netflix and Disney have said they are considering a boycott of the state. Last year 455 film and television productions were made in Georgia, where film companies enjoy a 30% tax rebate and 92,000 people work in the industry so the impact could be significant. American film writer, Michael Carlson, considers the story.In Amitav Ghosh’s new novel Gun Island, the protagonist Deen Datta finds himself on a journey from the muddy Sunderbans of Bangladesh – the world’s largest mangrove forest – to Los Angeles and Venice, to solve a linguistic mystery. Ghosh discusses his desire to include in his narrative the powerful issues of today: climate change, migration, and the displacement of people around the world.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins

The long awaited adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s cult fantasy novel Good Omens arrives on Amazon on Friday. Samira talks to Michael Sheen and David Tennant who play a fussy Angel and a loose-living Demon forced into an unlikely alliance to stop Armageddon. Brìghde Chaimbeul is a young Gaelic speaking piper from the Isle of Skye and one of Scotland’s rising stars. Brìghde won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2016 and her debut album, The Reeling, has received rave reviews. The pipes she plays, though, aren't the familiar Highland bagpipes but the Scottish Smallpipes. She explains her unusual instrument to Samira Ahmed, and how her style is rooted in her indigenous language and culture, yet draws inspiration from elsewhere - Bulgaria, for instance. And she plays.The charity Youth Music has undertaken research showing that allowing vulnerable students to choose what music they study and play improves their outcomes in school. This has been reported as 'exchanging Mozart for Stormzy', but Matt Griffiths, Youth Music's Chief Executive, that the reality is far from that and more subtle. Samira finds out what it does mean and what Youth Music is doing.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Lenny Henry discusses his latest role as Elmore in August Wilson’s play King Hedley II. King is a young black man, just out of prison, who dreams of starting a business and a family. Then the smooth-talking, crap-shooting hustler Elmore wanders in and changes the dynamic in the yard. Artistic director Nadia Fall tells Samira why she has brought this epic, set in Pittsburgh in the Reagan era, to the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and announces her plans for her second season there.The celebrated comic artist and graphic novelist Posy Simmonds, famous for her satirical long-running comic strips Gemma Bovary and Tamara Drewe in The Guardian, and books including Cassandra Darke, discusses her first major UK retrospective covering a 50-year career.The Central Park Five are the subject of a new true crime drama from Netflix. When They See Us centres on the wrongful conviction of five teenagers of colour for violent rape in New York in 1989 and their following 25-year fight to prove their innocence. The show is directed by Ava DuVernay who’s known for her critically acclaimed films Selma about Martin Luther King, and the documentary 13th, which considers the high percentage of African-Americans in US prisons. Dreda Say Mitchell reviews the drama.And poet, performer and juggler Gruffudd Owen on being the new Welsh-language children's laureate.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

Kirsty is joined by drag queens Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, two of the biggest stars of American TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, who are on stage in London in Drag Becomes Her, a parody of Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s film, Death Becomes Her. As the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon approaches we consider the moon’s place in culture. Artist Luke Jerram discusses his artwork Museum of the Moon which tours 7m exact replicas of the moon that are suspended high above visitors and can currently be seen at the Natural History Museum and Ely Cathedral. Critic Hannah McGill also considers how the moon is represented in film and literature more broadly.Restoration Comedies are often staged, Restoration Tragedies, more rarely. But director Prasanna Puwanarajah has chosen for his debut with the RSC Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved. It’s a somewhat operatic play, with speeches like arias and originally running at over four hours. Puwanarajah has taken a scalpel to it and his staging is influenced by comic books. “It’s ‘Blade Runner meets Gotham’,” he says. Puwanarajah talks to Kirsty Lang about why this play, first staged in 1682, has much to say to audiences today. He tells her, too, why he gave up being a doctor to act, write and direct, and, having worked in both kinds of theatre, the connections between medicine and drama.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Rebecca Armstrong

Anish Kapoor’s latest exhibition features new sculptures in welded steel, granite and onyx, as well as a series of large-scale paintings which he rarely shows. The artist discusses his continuing fascination with depicting bodily fluids, and with his favourite colour, alizarin crimson.In the new film Booksmart, Beanie Feldstein plays one half of a pair of high school female friends who have succeeded in getting places at Ivy League colleges by keeping their heads down and studying hard. But when they find that less dedicated students at their school have also been successful college applicants, the girls begin to question whether they have sacrificed too much for their academic futures. Beanie discusses the friendship at the heart of Booksmart and why she thinks it’s such a breakthrough movie.US indie rock band Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig discusses their latest album Father of the Bride, ahead of their forthcoming Glastonbury gig.Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

Matthew Bourne's new dance work Romeo + Juliet has a young cast featuring dozens of teenage dancers who auditioned to join his professional company. John talks to choreographer Matthew Bourne, Paris Fitzpatrick and Cordelia Braithwaite who play Romeo and Juliet, and two young dancers from Leicester, Megan Ferguson and Alexander Love. Little Steven, or Stevie Van Zandt, is best known as the guitarist to Bruce Springsteen and a member of the E Street Band. As he releases Summer of Sorcery, the new album by his all-star band the Disciples of Soul, Little Steven discusses his own music, performing with The Boss, and his unexpected acting role The Sopranos.The Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr has died at the age of 95. Michael Rosen pays tribute and we hear John's recent interview with Judith at her home. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser

Comedian Frank Skinner returns to the stand-up stage with his new tour Showbiz which he will be taking to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer where he first made his name, winning a Perrier Award in 1991. Now a radio and panel show host and co-writer of football anthem Three Lions with long time double act David Baddiel, he talks about the changing face of comedy and the thrill of improvisation.BAFTA have analysed nearly 130,000 non-news programmes between September 2017 and September 2018, and found out that climate change featured fewer times than cats, cakes and picnics. But how much is it the responsibility of the arts to enact social change through its programming? Aaron Matthews, the head of industry sustainability at BAFTA and David Butcher of The Radio Times discuss.Anna, a new immersive play by Ella Hickson, is a thriller set in 1968 East Berlin, a place where what you said in public and what you might admit in private needed to be rather different. The audience for this production have to wear headsets so as to experience things from the perspective of the secret service. Theatre critic Susannah Clapp reviews.George the Poet won big at this years British Podcast Awards in a wide range of categories - fiction, arts and culture and current affairs - for his show Have You Heard George's Podcast? He talks about what he felt he could do differently in a podcast as opposed to a new poetry collection.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May