MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Latest editorial
‘Are we the same person? If not, when and why not?’
Radical playwright DAVID EDGAR talks to Mayer Wakefield about the personal and political questions posed in his one-man show Trying It On in which, at the age of 70, he confronts his 20-year-old self
David Edgar
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
WHAT did a 20-year-old David Edgar make of events in 1968?
I was very inspired by them. I came to university from a public school, where I’d been involved in CND and was very much opposed to the Vietnam war.
But when I got there, I was quite taken aback by the revolutionary left, whose rhetoric and politics were much further to the left than anything I’d come across before.
In April 1968, I found a mentor — a leading radical student — who said to me just after the Tet offensive: “Why do you think the Viet Cong were able to get into the compound of the [US] embassy?
More from this author
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
MAYER WAKEFIELD wonders why this 1978 drama merits a revival despite demonstrating that the underlying theme of racism in the UK remains relevant
MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to playwright Richard Bean about his new play Reykjavik that depicts the exploitation of the Hull-based “far-fleet” trawlermen
MAYER WAKEFIELD finds himself caught in the crossfire during a riveting piece of activist theatre
