PETER Talbot, the founder of the brilliant and always original Rude Mechanical Theatre Company, has been awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to the arts. Pete founded the Rude Mechanical company in 1997 and spent the next 27 years building it into one of the country’s most distinctive touring open air…
IF you are a fan of the popular television series The Detectorists you will know that the curious and occasionally eccentric people who head out into the countryside with their metal detectors sometimes make remarkable discoveries. A Dorset detectorist discovered a beautiful Early Bronze Age mirror and another found an equally rare and exquisite crescent-shaped…
MATILDA Temperley, an accomplished professional photographer who now runs Somerset Cider Brandy and Burrow Hill Cider, the businesses her father Julian founded, is the new patron of Somerset Art Works. This year the visual arts festival in September will be celebrating Somerset’s rich history and diversity under the theme of “cultural connections.” Matilda knows the…
ONE of this country’s most distinguished and critically acclaimed actresses, Dame Harriet Walter is coming to the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, for a fund-raising evening on Sunday 14th June. A star of stage and screen for 40 years, Dame Harriet has a long and illustrious relationship with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National…
DORCHESTER has a record-breaking history of community plays … and now the work is starting on number eight. What will its theme be? The Dorchester community play phenomenon began in 1985 with Entertaining Strangers. In the ensuing 40 years, local residents, with professional writers including Ann Jellicoe, David Edgar and Stephanie Dale, have created an…
ANYONE who has visited the great Tisbury tithe barn, now home to the Messums West contemporary art gallery, will understand why the word “cathedral” comes to mind – and the new installation, Forest Cathedral, takes this as its inspiration, creating a powerful experience for visitors to the 700-year old building, with its awe-inspiring, soaring timber…
“THE ship is in her trim; the merry wind blows fair from land*” – exactly the message you need as you’ve packed the picnic basket, stowed the chairs in the car, checked your tickets on the phone (?) and set off for an evening in the open air, surrounded by trees and hedgerows, all ready…
On 22nd November 1990 (Thanksgiving Day!) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned as Conservative leader after weeks of rumours and high expectations. That November, the Artiste Gallery in Bath had an exhibition of the paintings of surrealist absurdist cartoonist and writer Glen Baxter, already famous for his hilarious pictures with their bizarre captions, often underlining the…
DORSET’s county town has many things going for it, but theatrically it is a national record-breaker. There have been seven community plays and now Dorchester Community Plays Association is looking forward to an eighth. Meanwhile, there is a nostalgic weekend ahead, from 27th to 29th March, with a look back at the fifth community play,…
WE wouldn’t exist without the sun – but how much do most of us know about it? Installation artist Luke Jerram asks visitors to come and discover the bright star that gives us light and life in his new touring project, Helios, which will be at Dorchester Corn Exchange until Monday 6th April. Helios, like…