Front Row

Ninety years since Dame Ninette de Valois founded what we know now as the Royal Ballet and 75 since her post war production of Sleeping Beauty, Tom Sutcliffe talks to Marianela Núñez, Principal Ballerina at the Royal Ballet about Sleeping Beauty's significance in the Royal Ballet's repertoire, the demands of playing such an iconic role and the challenges of rehearsing at home during lockdown. We explore The Design Museum in London’s exhibition, Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life, It's a retrospective exploring the work of the pioneering designer, who, alongside better known male architects like Le Corbusier, was a defining influence on modernist furniture and interiors. The exhibition charts Perriand’s journey through the machine aesthetic to her adoption of natural forms, and later from modular furniture to major architectural projects. Design critic Corrine Julius joins us to review.This weekend the BBC will celebrate “The Glastonbury Experience 2021” in place of the cancelled festival. But Latitude has just announced that in just over one month’s time it will be the first major festival to go ahead this summer. We speak to Festival director Melvin Benn about how they intend to make it work in the current Covid-affected environment. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Oliver Jones

We're speaking to all the authors shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 and tonight it's the turn of Cherie Jones. Her novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, is set on and around the Barbados beaches of the 80s. Lala braids tourists’ hair in the idyllic setting but her home life is blighted by poverty, violence and lack of choices – and when she has a baby, a dangerous chain of events is set in motion. Cherie Jones talks about this debut novel that has been years in the writing. Anish Kapoor wrote an article earlier this month decrying what he described as a “hate-filled campaign to de-Islamify India…via the destruction of a world-class monument.” The monument he was referring to was India’s Parliament which he said was “the greatest set of government buildings anywhere in the world.” Professor Sarover Zaidi, from the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, and BBC journalist Geeta Pandey, who is based in the BBC’s Delhi bureau, join Samira to discuss the controversial Central Vista Project which aims to redevelop India’s Parliamentary district.In Tanika Gupta’s new play The Overseas Student the young man who comes from India to study Law is Mohandas Gandhi. While here he strove to fit in as an English gentleman, and was not politically active. But, the playwright tells Samira that his years living in Hammersmith and walking the streets of London shaped the man who became the great leader in India’s independence movement.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May Studio Engineer: Duncan HannantMain image: Esh Alladi in The Overseas Student at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. Image credit: Helen Maybanks

Joan Armatrading discusses her 22nd album, Consequences, and writing songs about love inspired by observation rather than personal experience and how, despite recording every element herself at her home studio, it’s not a lockdown album.Scottish contemporary composer Erland Cooper's latest work, Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence, marks the writer George Mackay Brown’s centenary. Written and recorded for solo violin and string ensemble over three movements, it is also distinguished by the unusual manner of its release. John Wilson finds out more. After reports that the EU is considering restricting the number of UK-made television programmes that can be broadcast in member states, we talk to the BBC’s Brussels Correspondent Nick Beake about the implications for UK TV. Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald

In two days' time, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester will open its doors to an audience for the first time in over a year. And the first show to be presented will be a one-woman gig musical, a debut play from actor Lauryn Redding, she talks to Nick about penning the songs and the script and playing all the characters in Bloody Elle.Writer and director Harry MacQueen talks about his new film Supernova, starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as a couple struggling with a diagnosis of early-onset dementia who take a road trip together to reconnect with friends, family and places from their past.The Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 this summer is exploring the theme ‘How Will We Live Together?’ Architecture critic Oliver Wainwright tells us about the exhibitions on display at this year’s festival and what architecture can do to tackle big questions.And we talk to Cardiff Singer of the World Audience Prize winner Claire Barnett-Jones.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene AkalawuMain image: Lauryn Redding Image Credit: Pippa Rankin

50 years after last playing the Danish prince, Sir Ian McKellen is returning to the role of Hamlet, in an age, colour gender-blind production. At the age of 82, he has new insight to the character. He tells presenter John Wilson it’s clear to him Hamlet is bisexual, and how he is tackling the physical challenges of stage acting.He talks about his coming out in a BBC radio interview in 1988, how it liberated him and improved his acting. He also talks about his love of the theatre, how drama is an important aspect of British identity, and the joy of working in a company, the way his career began.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May Studio Engineer: Giles Aspen

We announce and speak to the winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Peggy Ashcroft said that Winnie, in Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, ‘is one of those parts…that actresses will want to play in the way that actors aim at Hamlet – a ‘summit’ part’. She was right, several great actresses, Ashcroft herself, Billie Whitelaw and Maxine Peake, have – while buried above the waist, then up to the neck, in a mound - scaled that summit. In Front Row, Samira Ahmed talks to two more, Juliet Stevenson, an acclaimed Winnie in 2015 and Lisa Dwan, in the 60th anniversary production that opens tonight, about the joys and trials of playing this desperately cheerful woman. Tonight, the main stage of the Bristol Old Vic will play host to Outlier, a play about isolation, addiction and friendship in rural Devon. It is written by performance poet Malaika Kegode in her theatrical debut, and accompanied by the music of local Bristolian band Jakabol. While normally, debut playwrights may have been programmed for one of the theatre’s more intimate spaces, the pandemic has given emerging talent the opportunity to occupy the spotlight. Tom Morris, Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic, explains how the pandemic has actually enabled more risk-taking.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary Dunn Studio Engineer: Giles Aspen

Starring James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan, Together is a new BBC2 drama following a couple forced to re-evaluate their relationship during lockdown. Polar opposites in personality and political opinion, the unnamed characters “he” and “she” are only together for the sake of their young son. Can physical proximity create a new emotional connection? Critic Hanna Flint reviews. The winner of the 2021 CILIP Carnegie Medal for outstanding achievement in children’s writing was today announced as Jason Reynolds for his book Look Both Ways. It’s a series of intertwined stories that focuses on the unsupervised 15 minutes when children walk home from school and includes children dealing with bullying, homophobia, sick parents and anxiety. We speak to Jason about the stories and his work as US National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature.Colin Macleod’s home is on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, leading an outdoor life as a crofter and fisherman, accompanied by his two sheepdogs. But he’s also an acclaimed singer-songwriter who’s performed with Sheryl Crow, Van Morrison and Robert Plant. His new album Hold Fast is out this week – and he’ll be performing live especially for Front Row.Main image: Colin Macleod Image credit: Jack Johns

To play the celebrated British painter, J.M.W. Tuner, for Mike Leigh’s film, Mr Turner, the actor Timothy Spall learned to paint. Four years later, it was the paintings he created while playing the role of another famous British painter, LS Lowry, that led to his first commission for an exhibition of his own paintings. Timothy joins Front Row to talk about finding his own style as a painter.As a junior doctor and playwright, Shaan Sahota has a unique perspective on the past 18 months. In her new play Under the Mask, she has distilled her experience as a frontline doctor at the height of the pandemic into a 60 minute audio installation. She joins us to discuss the work, writing as therapy and experimenting with 3D binaural sound. Irish Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin TD has proposed a basic income guarantee for artists. She explains the details for the pilot scheme, what it would cost, who would be eligible and how much they’d get.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon Richardson

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes discuss the new screen version of their smash hit musical, In the Heights, which celebrates the intertwined lives of Latino immigrants and their children in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan, where both Miranda (who wrote the music) and Alegria Hudes (who wrote the script) grew up. The drama is focussed on Usnavi - the young owner of a cornershop or bodega, - where friends, relatives and community elders hang out, share their dreams and fears and fall in love.With a planned extension of Coronavirus restrictions announced this evening, many theatres and music venues are having to consider delaying opening or admitting full-capacity audiences. Many had been counting on opening on 21st June to stay afloat. Theatre producer Sonia Friedman and Mark Davyd, chief executive of the Music Venues Trust, discuss the repercussions of the extended restrictions.Samira talks to writer, actress and director Gerda Stevenson about her film of George Mackay Brown’s play The Storm Watchers made for the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney in celebration of Mackay Brown’s centenary. Described as a play for voices THE STORM WATCHERS was published in 1967 in his book of short stories A CALENDAR OF LOVE. The film was shot in the Orkneys under lock down featuring a cast of local almost entirely non professional actors who shot the interior scenes on their mobile phones.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary DunnMain image: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage reflects on the experience of the pandemic in new BBC film, A Pandemic Poem: Where Did The World Go? Interspersed with interviews from people across the UK, the poem chronicles the pandemic from the first lockdown to the rollout of the vaccination programme. What one memory would you choose if you had to live it forever when you die? That’s the question posed in After Life, Jack Thorne and Bunny Christie’s new production at the National Theatre inspired by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film. Theatre critic Ava Wong Davies and the British Council’s Director of Film Briony Hanson review the play and consider wider depictions of the afterworld on stage and screen.Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature film, Court, was selected to represent India in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars in 2015. His second feature film, The Disciple, which focuses on a musician trying to become an Indian classical music master, won three prizes at last year’s Venice Film Festival. With The Disciple now showing on Netflix, Chaitanya joins Front Row to discuss creating a new cinematic vision of India. Major publishing organisations and leading authors have joined forces to campaign against potential changes to copyright law, which they say would flood the UK with cheap foreign editions and threaten livelihoods. The Save our Books campaign, organised by the Publishers Association, the Society of Authors, the Association of Authors’ Agents and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, is in response to a new government consultation into the UK’s post-Brexit approach to copyright. Stephen Lotinga, CEO of the Publishers Association, joins us to discuss.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald