17 January 2006
Tuesday 17 January 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
On Night Waves tonight, Susan Hitch meets Iraqi and British theatremakers who are working to create a unique collaborative production of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale. Plus, the wit, wisdom and extraordinary contradictions of American journalist HL Mencken; the forgotten story of Cuban cinema; and a new radio play by Booker winner John Banville.
Programme Details
On Night Waves tonight, Susan Hitch meets a group of British and Iraqi theatremakers who have created a production together. Their version of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale will be performed in English and Arabic in London later this month before touring internationally. Susan finds out how the project came about, how they've managed to pull it off - and what the British and Iraqi writers, actors and directors have learned about each other's ways of working.
Plus - the work of the rambunctious journalist and Man of the Twenties HL Mencken has been enjoying a resurgence of interest lately. Mencken is best known for his caustic one-liners - such as "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" and "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence". But he was a much more complex figure. Susan talks to the author of a new biography to explore how Mencken could campaign so hard against lynching in the Thirties that his hometown was boycotted - yet was distinctly soft on Nazism.
Also tonight - Susan is joined by novelist Lawrence Norfolk to review a new radio play by Booker winner John Banville, imagining what happened in 1967 when ex-Nazi Martin Heidegger met one of his favourite poets Paul Celan - who survived the Holocaust. And the curator of a new season of Cuban cinema tells the forgotten story of Cuban film-makers' complicated relationship with the Castro regime...
Join Susan tonight for Night Waves at 9.30, here on BBC Radio 3.
Further information
H.L. Mencken: The American Iconoclast by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers is published by Oxford University Press on 26 January.
Todtnauberg by John Banville is Radio 4’s Afternoon Play on Friday 20 January. It goes out from 2.15pm to 3pm. You can listen to the play for a week after it has been broadcast by going to www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/afternoonplay/ and clicking on ‘Friday’.
The Motion Group’s new version of Igor Stravinsky and Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s The Soldier’s Tale, by Abdulkareem Kasid and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is at the Old Vic Theatre in London from 26 January until 4 February. www.oldvictheatre.com
The Cuban cinema season continues at the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank until 31 January. The season then tours to Belfast, Birmingham, Cambridge, Cardiff, Nottingham and Stirling during February and March.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/incinemas/nft/seasons/cuba/
