Programme Details

Keep back! No cameras, please! And definitely no autographs.....except for radio listeners of course...This evening you have a back stage pass to the premiere in Cannes of Gus Van Sant's new film, Last Days... then you'll be whisked to the South Bank Centre in London for a performance by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and later you'll be entertained by the guitar of Ry Cooder - the composer of vivid film sound tracks such as Paris, Texas and the eminence grise behind the Buena Vista Social Club.

For the more serious there'll be a trip to the state asylum in New Jersey with Dr Jonathan Miller and Andrew Scull, the author of Madhouse - A Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine. They'll be pondering the lessons to be learned from the true and horrifying story of Henry Cotton who experimented on the people in his care.
And to round off the programme there'll be a chance to experience the exhilaration of conceptual art at the Lisson Gallery in London with Rachel Campbell-Johnston.

That's all in Night Waves with Susan Hitch at 9.30pm.




Presenter: Susan Hitch
Producer: Zahid Warley







Additional information:

1) Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull is published by Yale University Press

2) Gus van Sant's film, Last Days, will be released in September

3) Theatre of the New Ear including Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman were performing at the South Bank Centre in London. http://www.sbc.org.uk/main/index.asp

4) Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine is released by Nonesuch on 13th June.

5) Art and Language is at the Lisson Gallery in London until 2nd July. http://www.lisson.co.uk/