There are numerous mentions of the His Dark Materials stageplays in “Britain's Secret Theatre” in The Guardian today. Writer Nicholas Wright comments, “it wouldn't be possible to produce shows on this scale any other way. Nick Hytner, the designer and I used the workshops to shape and explore not just the writing of His Dark Materials but how to use puppets, whether people would be invisible, the daemons – we couldn't have done that sitting in a room talking.” Read more.
Britain's Secret Theatre
October 5, 2005
“Surviving the Kiln”
October 4, 2005
A belated article has appeared rebuffing Pullman's “Common Sense Has Much to Learn From Moonshine” (from January 2005). AM Siriano claims at The Reality Check that “what [Pullman] is really saying is that traditional values are not based on facts. Conservatives don't think, says Pullman, and their loyalty to the superfluous study of syntax and parts of speech is a case in point. Conservatives, especially the ones who actually believe a fairy tale like Christianity, are all about those nasty things called rules, and God knowsâ€â€er, the Eternal Now, the Great Otherness, or Gaia knowsâ€â€that we all have had way too much o’ that!” Read more.
Lyra Returns?
September 28, 2005
The Journal reports on a talk Philip Pullman gave in Newcastle last night, the inaugural Fickling Lecture on developments in children's literature. “It was an intellectual tour de force”, says the paper, “but many in the audience were probably most interested to hear that Lyra, the heroine of His Dark Materials, will be back.” Presumably Pullman was refering to the upcoming Book of Dust: the upcoming companion piece to His Dark Materials, which is believed will carry on the story started in Lyra's Oxford, along with other short stories. Read more.
More on the Playbox Theatre's His Dark Materials
September 27, 2005
In Spring 2006, Playbox Theatre Company will stage Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
Artistic Director, Stewart McGill says, “We loved Nicholas Hytner’s epic staging at the NT, yet we feel what we want to do is rekindle the imagination with our production, so the show will use movement, aerial artistry, and some of the finest young actors aged 14-25 to grace the stage. Our designer Kate Unwin is immersing herself in the trilogy and we hope our work will be a beautiful alternative to the previous production. It will be an active partnership between creators, actors, material and audience making the worlds of the books in an entirely new, non-pictorial way. We welcome fans of the novels and hope that groups and individuals will spend time here for both parts. Dates are being finalised right now and booking will open in November. As a passionate devotee of the books I can’t wait to start rehearsals with the creative team and the performers. I think our approach may be a little darker than the National’s, a journey of souls… a rather special event for us allâ€Â.
The team so far includes:
Directors Stewart McGill, Mary King & Emily Quash
Design, Kate Unwin
Technical Director, Ian Roberts
Pullman's September Newsletter
September 24, 2005
Philip Pullman has posted his Septemeber newsletter on his website. This month, spurred by his presence at a conference sponsored by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, he discusses global warming at great length. “I`m talking about the changes in the climate that we`ve been seeing more and more of in recent years – the huge loss of the Arctic sea ice, the retreating glaciers, the threatened Antarctic ice shelf, the increasing temperatures of the sea, the loss of coral reefs, and so on, and so on. […] The great entrepreneurs who set the Industrial Revolution going couldn`t have known, when they invented their steam engines and burnt vast amounts of coal, what the results would be two hundred years later.” Read more.
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Images from The Golden Compass movie are © New Line Cinema.