Right Mess Theatre are here to bring you an evening of Cabaret
splendour as they raise funds to bring their new show Alcatraz to New
Horizon Youth Centre for homeless young people. You can find out more
about New Horizon and the work they do here.
The line up includes Elf Lyons, Hannah Maxwell, Kayla MacQuarrie & Emily Howarth.
Alcatraz by Nathan Lucky Wood is a thrilling play about family and
social care that follows Sandy on her daring, Christmas mission to
emulate Clint Eastwood and bust her gran out of lock-up. It will
premiere at the Vault Festival 2019.
As a foreign news correspondent Sarah covered the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as stories across the world from Kosovo to Malawi. In more recent years she has focused on features, columns and celebrity interviews. With Sarah we will explore what it takes to get started on a newspaper career, how a career can develop, the skills & experienced required to get a foot in the door, as well as perhaps exploring some of her most memorable career moments.
Interested in a career in Communications? Journalism?
Publishing? Politics? Public Relations? Have you considered
how you could combine several of these interests by becoming a Press Officer…
come and meet 3 QM alumni currently working as Press/Media officers, learn
about the role, how it varies in different environments, how it will make full
use of your writings skills and powers of persuasion and how to get started on
this career path.
Alainna Hadjigeorgiou, Press Officer for the Orion Publishing
Group, an award winning division of Hachette UK. (BA English/Comp.Lit
2014)
Joshua Snape, Media Officer at the Department of
Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. (BA History & Politics
2013)
Tim Picton, Press Officer for the Labour Group of the
London Assembly (BA English 2014)
What does a Press Officer do?
In Publishing “key responsibilities include liaising with
the press, organising trade announcements and securing targeted and high
profile media coverage for projects… this means working closely with authors,
agents, journalists, freelancers and the wider publishing teams.” (Alainna)
However in
Government/Politics it is more about news and the story: “At the heart of it,
the job involves being able to judge what makes a good news story, how to write
for a number of different audiences” (Josh) and “To succeed you need
to be able to shape that story and ensure that it is either mitigated or used
to the organisation’s advantage”. (Tim)
Guest Biographies:
Alainna has worked in publishing for four years, starting out as an intern for independent publisher Profile Books, before securing her first job in the publicity team at Quercus Books and moving across to Orion in April 2018. In 2017 she was long listed for the London Book Fair Trailblazer award. She studied English at Queen Mary and graduated in 2014.
Joshua graduated in 2013 with a BA in History & Politics and has 5 years of experience in public sector communications. Starting off working as a Communications Officer for the pharmacy regulator, he has spent the last 3 years as a government Press Officer at the Charity Commission and subsequently, the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Tim graduated from Queen Mary in 2014 with a degree in English Literature. He then continued studying the subject, gaining an MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture from UCL two years later. Since, he has worked as a Labour Party campaign organiser, a Parliamentary Assistant to a London Labour MP and is currently a press officer for the Labour Group of the London Assembly, based at City Hall.
Show and Tell is a series of TED-talk style events where speakers from the arts, humanities and creative industries tell their stories at Queen Mary University of London.
This episode features broadcaster Shahidha Bari, theatre artist Mojisola Adebayo, lecturer and writer Karina Likorish Quinn and theatre director Billy Barrett. Introduction by Jonathan Boffey.
Rupert is
responsible for marketing within Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama. He
has worked for numerous organisations including Cineworld, Hackney Empire, The
Yard Theatre and Rose Bruford College. In his spare time he runs To Do List a
website about offbeat things to do in London: http://todolist.org.uk.
Show and Tell Panel
Shahidha
Bari
Shahidha Bari is a writer, academic
and broadcaster working in the fields of literature, philosophy and art. Born
in 1980, she was one of the first ever BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers
(2011) and a winner of the Observer Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism
(2015). She is Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and Fellow of
the Forum for European Philosophy at the LSE, and writes for the TLS, Guardian
and Financial Times, amongst others. She features frequently on BBC Radio 4,
and currently presents BBC Radio 3’s nightly Arts and Ideas programme Free
Thinking. She lives in London.
Mojisola
Adebayo
Mojisola Adebayo BA, MA, PhD, FRSL,
is a performed and published playwright, performer, producer, director,
workshop facilitator and teacher. She has been making theatre internationally
for over 25 years, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe.
Karina
Lickorish Quinn
Karina is a Peruvian-British writer
and a PhD student and teacher of creative writing here at Queen Mary. She has
published short stories and translations in various journals and is working on
her debut novel about ghosts, guano and two-headed cats.
Billy
Barrett
Theatre-maker, Breach Theatre and MA
Theatre and Performance student.
Coming
up
Show and Tell is back for 2019 with a whole host of exciting new speakers.
Show and Tell is a series of TED-talk style events where speakers from the arts, humanities and creative industries tell their stories at Queen Mary University of London.
Group sessions with top academics from Queen Mary will look at key A-level English and Drama texts and concepts to help with your revision. 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
The philosopher mediating alone in his study is a cliché of western
culture. But behind the hackneyed image lies a long history of
controversy. Was solitude the ‘school of genius’, as Edward Gibbon
claimed, or did it breed irrationalism, dogmatism and melancholy, as Dr
Johnson and others insisted? In the 1730s David Hume suffered a
breakdown which he attributed to his solitary philosophising; three
decades later, in a much-publicised quarrel with Jean-Jacques
Rousseau,Hume attacked Rousseau’s reclusiveness as ‘savage’,
‘bestial’,the mark of an ‘arrant madman’. A life of lone thought was
pathological: a judgement that still finds echoes in present-day
concerns about social isolation and loneliness.
“You may well know this already, but this is just to let you know that there will be a Year One End of Term Party, Thursday 13th December 4-6pm, ArtsOne foyer. There will be nice nibbles, and good cheer, and it’ll be a chance to celebrate the conclusion of your first semester at Queen Mary.
Wishing you a happy week 12, and hope to see you on Thursday.” Rachael Gilmour, Head of English.
PGRS PhD Panel and Literary Quiz |Thursday 13 December | 5.15pm | ArtsOne Lecture Theatre and SCR Bar
In a change to the usual format, we will be welcoming two current PhD students and members of last year’s PGRS committee to give papers on their research. We will then be heading over to the Senior Common Room Bar for a special Christmas quiz.
Our speakers are:
Di Beddow: The Cambridge of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
Danny Rhodes: Yeats’s Missing Ghosts: Hauntings and Materialisations in the Radium Age.
Harriet Baker, Will Burgess, Hannah Donovan, Charlotte McCallum, Charlie Pullen, Julie Tanner, Frith Taylor, Vincenzo Torromacco, Alice Wickenden
Watch this space for details or follow us on Twitter @QMEnglishPGRS
‘Our monthly variety night where you can perform anything you want!
We welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a night of singing, dancing, poetry, spoken word, comedy, and any other talents! If you would like to watch, all that is required is small donation (50p upwards) which will be given to charity.
Here’s all you need to know about Queen Mary Theatre Company’s events in November and December 2018 including a showcase for the underrepresented BAME community, variety nights and career enhancing workshops.
November
SLAPPIN’ DA BASS
Our monthly variety night where you can perform anything you want!
We welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a night of singing, dancing, poetry, spoken word, comedy, and any other talents! If you would to perform, please send a message to the Slappin Da Bass Facebook page linked below. If you would like to watch, all that is required is small donation (50p upwards) which will be given to charity.
Get theatrically groovin’ in a workshop on how to use movement in performance!
This workshop will teach you the tips and tricks you need to incorporate a little bit of movement into your productions. How to use movement and music creatively, how to make up choreography, how to use movement to transition between two scenes, how to make fun of yourself when dancing on stage!
This workshop is part of our DA (Developing Artistry) Program, our new initiative to help our members develop creative and career skills – use the link to our Facebook page below to find out more information.
We are excited to present four original shows in the first festival of its kind at QMTC dedicated to uplifting BAME voices. Check our Facebook page or our website for information on shows and tickets.
23rd and 24th November, Pinter Studio in ArtsOne, 7pm
8th and 9th December, Pinter Studio in ArtsOne, 7pm
SLAPPIN’ DA BASS
Our monthly variety night where you can perform anything you want!
We welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a night of singing, dancing, poetry, spoken word, comedy, and any other talents! If you would to perform, please send a message to the Slappin Da Bass Facebook page linked below. If you would like to watch, all that is required is small donation (50p upwards) which will be given to charity.
Join the Department for Education (DfE) for an introduction to the teaching profession, an overview of what to expect in the role, and a chance for you to ask questions about your teacher training options. The DfE presentation will be followed by a forum of teacher training providers, giving you more opportunities to find your best route into teaching.
Social media skills are essential for so many marketing, publishing, pr & comms roles… this is a fantastic opportunity to increase your skills AND useful for the CV/applications!
Booking now open: come along to listen to & meet recent QM English graduates guests and discover what they are doing with their English degrees. Drinks & Snacks will be served.
If you are still wondering what you will do with your English degree, come for an entertaining and interesting evening and discover opportunities in a range of possible careers. If you already know you are interested in a career in one or more of the sectors covered, this is a fantastic opportunity to get some insider tips on how to successfully access these roles.
Our guests will all talk about what they do and there will be a chance to meet them in small groups and ask your questions directly to the guests.
Spend your summer helping Barclays promote its services and win new business. Working on diverse projects with this fast-paced team, you’ll learn how to communicate effectively and creatively across a range of marketing channels.
QTaster is a programme which allows you to learn about different careers by visiting a variety of graduate employers – experience different working environments, learn about sectors and roles, and network with employers.
6 sessions take place between 16th January and 20th March – this includes 4 visits and 2 training sessions.
Previous employers have included: ASOS, British Heart Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Investec, UBS, Springer Nature, FDM and Microsoft. The schedule for Semester B is currently being confirmed – follow Careers & Enterprise on social media for updates.
Reuters Journalism Training Programme – apply by 30 November for September 2019 start
Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest independent news provider, reaching more than one billion people every day.
Prerequisites: Clear commitment to a career in journalism; Drive to build sources, break news and deliver deeply reported stories; Strong interest in issues that affect companies, markets and economies; Ability to generate original, relevant story ideas; Ambition to deliver journalism with real impact; Fluency in written English; Fluency in a second language beneficial but not compulsory; An international outlook
Support the Marketing team, helping to educate people about our products and services. Get stuck into various marketing projects in a dynamic, exciting environment. Impress us, and we could well offer you a full-time position once you graduate – starting summer 2020.
You will: Craft ad campaigns: Handle customer relationships; Deliver strategic insights; Promote TV shows; Plan, prioritise, research and juggle multiple projects
Queen Mary University of London and Wasafiri invite you to a reading and conversation with Nikesh Shukla and Bidisha. This is a chance to engage in lively discussion with some ground-breaking writers of the moment.
Inspired by the ‘Schadenfreude’ book, this Salon will bring together artists and performers (and you) to offer a distinctive perspective on this most morally conflicted of emotions. Come along and join the conversation.
Featuring our very own…
Tiffany Watt Smith
Curator: Cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith will curate the evening. She is author of ‘Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune’ (Wellcome Books, October 2018).
Lois Weaver
Artist: Lois Weaver is an artist, activist and Professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London.
Written by our BA Drama alumnus Reece Connolly, his show Chutney is having a full run at off-West End venue The Bunker.
“The world’s shaking. I’m seeing the murder in everything. A cat crosses my path, I fantasise about throwing a grenade at it.”
Gregg and Claire are a power couple. Well-to-do and up-and-coming. They’ve got the house. The car. The careers. They’re living out their parents dreams in blissful suburbia.
They also have an insatiable desire to murder animals.
This mutually discovered urge threatens to gut their world to its very core.
CHUTNEY is a pitch black comedy about love, happiness, and unleashing the beast within. Watch the fur fly.
An alternative cabaret night hosted by our very own PhD Drama graduate Daniel Oliver celebrating neurodiversity, featuring performers whose minds work a little differently…
Line up
Daniel Oliver: The cabaret night will be hosted by Daniel Oliver, a performance artist who makes participatory performances that aim to embrace dyspraxia.
Mawaan Rizwan: Mawaan is an actor, writer and comedian. He’s written for the New York Times and his comedy videos on YouTube have amassed over 18 million views.
Vijay Patel: Vijay Patel will present Asperger’s Question Time. A space where you (the audience) will be able to ask him any questions you like, any questions on your mind, think everyday, not any questions about his Asperger’s. He will have some things in place for his access, such as a respite, some care in case he might leave.
IndoorGoblin: ‘A solo project performed on keyboard, IndoorGoblin hopes to present the imagination clouds through a mixture of musical creations, combining spoken word with story-singing, hypnotic piano loops and glittery glockenspiel melodies.’
Don Biswas :Award winning ‘left wing conspiracy theorist with dyspraxia!‘ Twice winner of the London Comedy Store Gong Show.
Khia Spencer: Khia is a dancer and artist who has been identified with dyspraxic mind and ADD…
Join Rosie Vincent a BA Drama Gradutate to celebrate her identity as a Type 1 Diabetic as she attempts to transform the mass of her medical waste from the past 2.5 years.
On 14th November millions of people will come together to raise awareness of living with Diabetes for World Diabetes Day.
Rosie Vincent has been a Type 1 Diabetic for over 14 years. Je m’appelle Diabetic combines ritual, object, and projection to present the challenges of living with diabetes as well as celebrating the resilience of Rosie’s diseased body.
This piece reconnects the medical waste that is produced by the condition with Rosie’s own body to honour it as the means to keep her alive despite its hostile appearance.
Lucy Perman MBE will be in conversation with Dr Caoimhe McAvinchey discussing her role leading Clean Break over two decades.
Lucy was the Chief Executive of Clean Break from 1997 to 2018. In 2017 she won a Lifetime Achievement Award for work in criminal justice and she was also named in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 list. She has held a number of roles across the arts and cultural sector and received her MBE for services to drama in 2005. She is a trustee of the Almeida Theatre.
Caoimhe McAvinchey is Reader in Socially Engaged and Contemporary Theatre at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to this she established the MA Applied Drama: Theatre in Educational, Community and Social Contexts at Goldsmiths. Her publications include Theatre & Prison (2011), Performance and Community: Case Studies and Commentary (2013), Phakama: Making Participatory Theatre (2018) with Fabio Santos and Lucy Richardson, and Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System (forthcoming, 2018).
Caoimhe is currently collaborating with Clean Break theatre company on a book about the company’s four decades of innovative and radical theatre practice with and about women affected by the criminal justice system.
November 2018 marks the sixth year of Queen Mary University of London Drama’s strategic partnership with Europe’s largest festival of Bengali culture.
Selected from November’s events across six Tower Hamlets venues, we cordially invite you to a programme curated by Ruksana Begum (Tower Hamlets Arts) and Ali Campbell (QMUL Drama).
This leading international charity invites you to a panel discussion with academics, activists and Rohingya community leaders, plus spoken word pieces and a short film about the genocide in Myanmar.
Wednesday 7th November. Pinter Studio. 7.30 PM. (Doors open 7.00).
We have some eye-opening events coming up for those aged 16-18 including a Frankenstein themed Halloween event, a chance to hear from The Good Immigrant editor Nikesh Shukla, an expert discussion of The Handmaid’s Tale and a free A-Level revision day in early 2019.
Students are invited to a film screening, fancy dress lecture and Halloween Monster Mingle celebrating two hundred years of Mary Shelley’s gothic horror and feminist classic.
Queen Mary, University of London and Wasafiri invite you to a reading and conversation with Nikesh Shukla and Bidisha. This is a chance to engage in lively discussion with some ground-breaking writers of the moment.
Experts from our School of English and Drama come together to discuss Margaret Atwood’s famous dystopian novel. This panel discussion will explore the extent to which we can describe The Handmaid’s Tale as a feminist text.
It will challenge many opinions that readers hold regarding the novel, as well as placing it within the current political climate in the UK and USA. You will have the opportunity to question our experts, as well as having the chance to speak with undergraduates about what it is like to study literature at university level. This taster course is open to year 12 and 13 students. You must be studying English at A-level or SL/HL IB.
On Tuesday 25 September the streets of Whitechapel resonated with the sound of songs last heard there more than a century ago.
Year 7 students from five east London schools, including Mulberry School for Girls in Shadwell, Central Foundation School for Girls in Bow and Oaklands School in Bethnal Green are exploring how Victorian Londoners protested against their pay and working conditions. They sing Victorian protest songs, make placards expressing demands and write their own political speeches and chants. On Tuesday 25 September they took part in a parade with musicians in the streets where east Londoners protested in the Victorian period.
Watch the video of the protest
Workshop organisers Dr Vivi Lachs and Dr Nadia Valman, from Queen Mary University of London, drew on their research on the wave of strikes that spread across East London in 1889 and the culture of song and oratory that accompanied it. ‘Singing songs helped raise the morale of workers who were enduring terrible conditions in factories and workshops, and brought messages of hope that collective action could bring about change’ said Dr Lachs.
The songs were sung in Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jewish immigrant population, who made up the majority of poorly paid workers in Victorian Whitechapel. ‘We hope that this project will give students a glimpse of east London’s rich local history of protest,’ said Dr Valman.
Show and Tell is a series of TED-talk style events where speakers from the arts, humanities and creative industries tell their stories at Queen Mary University of London. Find out more: bit.ly/showandtell18
This episode features Wasafiri magazine editor Susheila Nasta, Medieval broadcaster Hetta Howes, podcaster Raifa Rafiq, researcher Emma Shapiro and puppeteer Edie Edmundson. Full biogs below.
The show is introduced by Beverley Stewart and hosted by Charlie Pullen from the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary.
Charlie Pullen
Charlie Pullen is a PhD candidate and Teaching Associate in English at Queen Mary University of London, where he researches education in the work of various early twentieth-century novelists, including H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, and Dorothy Richardson. His background is in widening participation and outreach and he writes for Times Higher Education.
Susheila Nasta
Professor Susheila Nasta, Prof of Modern and Contemporary Literature at QMUL, Emerita at Open University is a renowned critic, broadcaster and literary activist. Editor-in-chief at Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing, which she founded in 1984, she has published widely on South Asian Britain. www.wasafiri.org
Hetta Howes
Dr Hetta Howes is a lecturer in Medieval Literature at City, University of London. Her research specialises in women’s devotion in the Middle Ages, and as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker she is committed to sharing that research with a wider audience.
Raifa Rafiq
Raifa Rafiq is a trainee solicitor at one of the leading international law firms in the UK. She is also creator and co-host of the Literature and popular culture podcast Mostly Lit – named by the Guardian and the BBC as one of the top podcasts of 2017. mostly-lit.com
Emma Shapiro
After graduating with a BA in English and French from Queen Mary, Emma Shapiro was awarded a scholarship to complete an MA in London Studies, where she specialised in the Trinidadian writer Sam Selvon’s London fiction. Following her studies, Emma worked as a voluntary researcher for the Migration Museum project and as the graduate trainee at Pembroke College Library, Cambridge, where she curated an exhibition on the poet and co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement, Kamau Brathwaite, working in collaboration with the George Padmore Institute.
Edie Edmundson
Edie is a puppeteer and theatre maker who graduated from Drama at QM in 2015 and went on to train at the Curious School of Puppetry. Since then she has worked with Emma Rice at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Puppet Theatre Barge. She also writes and directs her own work, and is co-founder and associate director of Wondering Hands Theatre. She is currently puppeteering in ‘The Butterfly’s Spell’ at the Puppet Theatre Barge and is puppetry director for ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at the RSC.
Gender pay gaps, precarious work, paltry paternity leave – what does it mean to be a mother working in the creative arts?
Explore the role of motherhood in contemporary society and how it informs the work of writers and artists in this workshop at Museum of Childhood #BeingHUman18
Bring your little ones to this one day workshop exploring motherhood & making with workshops with (@LittleArtists_) & child-friendly talks from @CJessCooke
Follow tea’s journey from the docks of the East India Company, via London’s forgotten Chinatown and the warehouses of the East End, to wholesale sites in the City in Tea’s London walking tour
As night descends on the Whitechapel Road, see the derelict Royal London Hospital building come to life one last time as words and photographic projections evoke the ghosts of its past with our very own Nadia Valman
#IWriteMyWorld family workshop led by with our very own Karina Likorish Quinn allows children and their parents to remember, reflect, and discuss place and memory and write about what it means to them to have heritage from around the world.
Academics from Queen Mary University of London have led a series of workshops with year seven students from five east London schools exploring how Victorian Londoners protested against their pay and working conditions.
Workshop organisers, Dr Vivi Lachs and Dr Nadia Valman from Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama, drew upon their research on the musical and political culture of nineteenth century Jewish immigrants to the East End. Students learned Victorian protest songs, made placards expressing demands and wrote their own political speeches and chants.
On Tuesday 25 September the students paraded along the streets of Whitechapel with professional musicians from the Great Yiddish Parade marching band. The parade followed the same route where east Londoners protested in the Victorian period, drawing upon the wave of strikes that spread across East London in 1889.
The songs of the parade were sung in Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jewish immigrant population, who made up the majority of poorly paid workers in Victorian east London.
After parading up Whitechapel Road, the students finished with performances in Altab Ali Park. The aim of the workshop and parade was to promote awareness of the local heritage of protest to enable students to articulate their own versions of protest through writing, design and song.
“Singing songs helped raise the morale of Victorian workers who were enduring terrible conditions in factories and workshops, and brought messages of hope that collective action could bring about change,” said Dr Lachs.
“We hope that this project will give students a glimpse into east London’s rich local history of protest,” added Dr Valman.
More information
The workshop, Protest in Victorian Whitechapel, was led by Dr Vivi Lachs and Dr Nadia Valman from Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama. Five schools from London’s East End participated:
Panel and Literary Quiz | Thursday 13 December | 5.15pm | ArtsOne Lecture Theatre and SCR Bar
