Front Row

Arthur Hughes, known for his roles in The Archers, in which he plays Ruairi, and the BBC2 drama Then Barbara Met Alan, details the significance of his portrayal as Richard III in the new RSC production as a disabled actor. Earlier this month the literary world was shocked by the announcement that after 50 years the Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread, would be no more. What did this announcement mean and how healthy is the outlook for book prizes in the UK? Damian Barr was a judge last year and joins Tom to make a proposal for a new national prize alongside commentator Alex Clark.We Are Invisible We Are Visible is a day of Dada-inspired art works and performances in UK art galleries by deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists. Organiser Mike Layward explains why he wanted to bring Dada and disability together, while performance artist Aaron Williamson and curator and printmaker Mianam Yasmin Bashir Canvin discuss their respective Dadist offerings, the performance Hiding in 3D at the Ikon Gallery Birmingham and This Is Not a Pipe at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry ParkerPhoto: Ellie Kurttz, RSC

Playwright and BAFTA winning screenwriter Stephen Beresford has returned to writing for the stage with The Southbury Child, a co-production between The Chichester Festival Theatre and The Bridge Theatre in London. Stephen joins Samira to discuss his state of the nation play, focusing on a charismatic vicar at the centre of a controversy, in a Dartmouth parish in decline. Hive explores the life of a beehive over the four seasons of the year. Composer Sally Beamish visits the Front Row studio to tell Samira about her concerto for harp and orchestra, with harpist Catrin Finch who will play Pavan from Sally Beamish's score for a ballet version of The Tempest.From the past in Wolf Hall and the present in The State, writer and director Peter Kosminsky takes us to the near future in his new drama The Undeclared War. It’s a cyberwarfare thriller set in 2024, mixing espionage and politics with coding, bots and hacking. Peter joins Samira to discuss the research that goes into his projects, finding new faces, and how to set the drama of coding on the screen.And playwright James Graham on why he thinks the arts and creative subjects are under serious threat in our schools and universities.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian MayImage: Alex Jennings as David Highland in The Southbury Child at The Chichester Festival Theatre and The Bridge Theatre, London Photographer credit: Manuel Harlan

Critic Ben East and academic Catherine Love review Rock, Paper, Scissors, a trilogy of plays written by Chris Bush to mark the 50th anniversary of Sheffield Theatres and A Film About Studio Electrophonique, a documentary about Ken Patten's influential home studio in Sheffield.The three separate but interlinking plays will be performed simultaneously on the three stages of the Sheffield Theatres complex – Rock at the Crucible, Paper at the Lyceum and Scissors at Studio. A Film About Studio Electrophonique premieres this week at Sheffield DocFest. The documentary shines a loving spotlight on Ken Patten who built a recording studio in his council home in Sheffield and through his recording and mixing skills provided the launchpad for Pulp, ABC, Human League and many other burgeoning musicians in the steel city. The People’s History Museum has been shortlisted for this year’s Art Fund Museum of the Year prize. It was the Migration: a human story project which wove stories of contemporary and historic migration into the museum’s existing collection that caught the judges' attention. Dr John Gallagher, associate professor of Early Modern History at Leeds University, went to visit the museum for Front Row. Saturday marks 75 years since The Diary of Anne Frank was published. Poet, writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen has written a sonnet to commemorate this and he joins Front Row to give the first public reading and discuss the enduring significance of Anne Frank's book. Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Olivia SkinnerImage: Chanel Waddock as Coco and Daisy May as Molly in ROCK at The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. Photographer credit: Johan Persson

Rowan Atkinson is associated with a lot of ‘B’s – Blackadder, Bean, bumbling British spies... and now bees. He plays an inept house-sitter in a luxury mansion chasing after an insect in Netflix’s new Man Vs Bee. He talks about this, his iconic characters, and why making comedy isn’t always that fun.Artist Thomas J Price’s Warm Shores, a pair of 9 foot tall bronze figures, have just been installed outside Hackney Town Hall in London to mark Windrush Day. 74 years on from the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks, Thomas joins Tom live in the studio to discuss how his work honours the Windrush Generation while playing with ideas of power, public space and 3D body scans.When the Oscar-winning film director Susanne Bier turned her attention to television, the result was the acclaimed series The Night Manager, followed by The Undoing. She talks about her new series, The First Lady, which explores the lives of the wives of three American Presidents – Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Emma Wallace

As Glastonbury returns this week after a two year pandemic hiatus, a summer of festivals gets under way while some festivals are forced to cancel due to difficult conditions. We look at how the festival sector has struggled through the challenges of the last two years, and consider the importance of live music festivals to the UK economy and culture. Shahidha is joined live by Melvin Benn – Managing Director of Festival Republic and a director of Glastonbury Festival, Paul Reed CEO of the Association Of Independent Festivals and Lauren Down, Director of End Of The Road festival. In Roy Williams' new play The Fellowship, sisters Dawn and Marcia are children of the Windrush generation. They were activists together in the struggles for justice in the 1980s. The sisters have little in common now, but the fellowship of family connection is powerful. Roy Williams talks to Shahidha Bari about unflinchingly putting the stories of black British people on the stage. A tour round the Horniman Museum and Gardens in South London, shortlisted for the Art Fund's Museum of the Year, with Chief Executive Nick Merriman and Senior Curator Sarah Byrne.Presenter: Shahidha Bari Producer: Nicki PaxmanImage: Glastonbury Festival

Director Baz Luhrmann on the making of Elvis, his new biopic of Elvis Presley, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks. Director Mathilde Lopez talks about drawing on her heritage for a new production of Bizet's opera Carmen at Longborough Festival Opera. Theresa Heskins, Artistic Director of the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme on Tom, Dick and Harry, a new play about the escape attempt from Stalag Luft III in World War II. And Jessica Moor, author of the feminist thriller Keeper, singles out her 'moment of joy' in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

National Theatre Wales is about to open a new production described as a live documentary performance, Circle of Fifths. With cast and stories drawn from the local community, and taking place inside and out, it combines film, performance, storytelling, live music and dance, to tell stories of life, death and grief. The director Gavin Porter joins Front Row to explain how it will work.Because of the bad behaviour of human the world keeps coming to an end. Fortunately there is an organisation of people who can reset time to before disaster, take action and so save the planet. That's the premise of a new eight part action television series starring Paapa Essiedu. Karen Krizanovich and Kerry Shale review The Lazarus Project. They have also been watching the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande in which Emma Thompson plays a retired R.E. teacher who has never had an orgasm. So, she hires sex worker Leo Grande, played by Daryl McCormack, to teach her about the pleasures of sex. In the process both learn a good deal about themselves.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Sarah Johnson Photo credit: Mei Lewis, Mission Photographic

Operatic tenor Freddie De Tommaso on his overnight breakthrough to stardom and performing at the First Night Of The Proms.We announce and speak to the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.John Byrne, the Scottish artist, playwright and theatre maker: arts critic Jan Patience reviews the new retrospective of his work, A Big Adventure, open now at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.Plus, Kate visits the British Museum in London to see a collection of Ukrainian artefacts trafficked from the country, which recently went on display. Dr St John Simpson, Senior Curator in the Department of the Middle East, explains how they got here and how museums combat the illegal trade in antiquities.Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Nicki Paxman

Chicago based artist Theaster Gates on The Black Chapel - his design for this year’s Serpentine Gallery pavilion, which is created each year by world class artists who have included Ai Wei Wei, Olafur Eliasson, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaus.The latest Pixar film is Lightyear, which tells the story of Buzz, the square-jawed astronaut, before he touched down in Andy’s toybox in Toy Story. After being marooned on a hostile planet with his commander and crew, Buzz valiantly tries to find his way back home through space and time, while, of course, also confronting a threat to the universe's safety. But does this space odyssey fly? Catherine Bray gives her verdict. Music back catalogues: as Kate Bush’s 1985 hit Running Up That Hill and decades old-catalogues sell for huge sums, we speak to former Spotify Chief Economist Will Page on the new frontiers of the pop music business, and the impact of streaming, licensing and TikTok.Poet Dean Atta’s first young adult novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, won the 2020 Stonewall Book Award. He joins Samira to discuss his second, Only On The Weekends, telling the story of Mack - a gay teenager who finds himself at the centre of a queer love triangle as he attempts a long distance relationship between London and Glasgow.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Fresh from performing at the Queen's platinum jubilee concert, singer-songwriter George Ezra plays in the Front Row studio from his new album, Gold Rush Kid.James Graham's new BBC drama, Sherwood, is set in a Nottinghamshire mining village still scarred by the 1984 strike. Former BBC correspondent and journalist Triona Holden, who reported on the disputes at the time, joins Samira Ahmed live to review the new series.The new £500 million National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design has just opened in Oslo, Norway. The director Karin Hindsbo explains why the new cultural centre, which has attracted both criticism and acclaim, has been twenty years in the making.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kirsty McQuire