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In this interview, award-winning musical comedian Alex MacKeith and I examine his screenplay for Alice Troughton's new film The Lesson (2023). MacKeith goes over his creative process, from his incorporation of some of his experiences as a tutor following university to his development of individual characters, and from his project's growth and improvement across successive drafts to the kinds of affirmation that he gets from his work in musical comedy in comparison to his work in scriptwriting. We go on to discuss his magnificent central character: the writer J. M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant). The film follows Liam (Daryl McCormack), a young writer hired to prepare Sinclair's son (Stephen McMillan) for Oxford, but as it unfolds, we learn, alongside Liam, about Sinclair's personal and public lives. Sinclair's wife Hélène (Julie Delpy) hired Liam specifically to investigate him. A living cliché, Sinclair is claiming credit for work that really belongs to his deceased son Felix (Joseph Meurer). For this film, MacKeith was longlisted for a British Independent Film Award. It has been described by Stephen King as being '[c]old, smart, and suspenseful' and it is a New York Times's Critics Pick. In this climate, when conversations about originality, notably the place of artificial intelligence in creative and critical projects, are all the rage, this interview's exploration of authorship, intellectual property and retirement for creatives is especially timely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this two-part interview, I discuss Blackeyed Theatre's production of The Valley of Fear, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1915 Sherlock Holmes novel, with writer-director Nick Lane and actor Luke Barton. In the first half, I go over, with Lane, some of the changes that he makes to the novel's form to put Holmes on centre stage, his tantalization of audience members with ciphers, and his emphasis on the detective's and his biographer-cum-sidekick Dr Watson's friendship, on which so much relies. In the second half, I discuss, with Barton, his return to Holmes and how he has kept each of his performances of the detective distinct. We explore the detective's thought processes and how he displays them on stage and, for the recording, on camera; his limited but meaningful engagements with Moriarty, whose appearances in the Holmes canon are few and far in between; and finally, the decisions that the detective makes in relation to Birdy Edwards's case. This conversation is a sequel to our earlier one (Ue 2021) and it advances scholarship by celebrating Blackeyed Theatre's significant contributions to Holmes's afterlife. It shows the insight and care that is put into each adaptation; it examines Lane's and Barton's creative decisions in yet another fine project; and it reveals how a novel, one which has never ranked amongst Conan Doyle's finest, can profit from a second life on stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his in-person and video production of Oscar Wilde's one-act tragedy Salomé (1891), Ricky Dukes, Lazarus Theatre Company's founder and artistic director, explores its treatment of the dynamics of power and perception, all the while updating the play for contemporary audiences. Dukes has directed over thirty productions for the Lazarus Theatre Company, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth and The Tempest, as well as newer works such as an adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954). Dukes and I examine, in what follows, some of the challenges of making theatre in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic; the resonances of Wilde's play; his reading of it; and his creative decisions for this production, including the infamous Dance of the Seven Veils scene. Dukes takes stock of the gains and the losses for the individual characters and, in so doing, makes apparent how destructive their obsessions are. This interview, conducted in the pandemic's early days, offers insights into his imaginative adaptation of Wilde and into the Victorians' relevance for our own times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of being written over three decades ago, Mills’s posthumously published “Manifesto” not only anticipates but transcends the majority, if not the totality, of the scholarship on Tolkien, race, and racisms which has been published since 2003. Scholars in philosophy and related fields familiar with Mills’s work will recognize that the essay was a “critical exploration of [how] a fictional racial hierarchy strikingly illuminates the ongoing influence of certain old racist ideas on our present day [sic] social realities.” Reid has invited a wide-ranging Tolkienists who have read the essay to respond, briefly, on the significance of the essay to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Will Kostakis Australia based journalist and author is presented. When asked about the At the age of 19, your first novel was published, and your story is about how it happened, Form plays a crucial role in your work, as demonstrated in projects like The Sidekicks and The Greatest Hit. Does your writing process differ for short stories? He refers to the high school teacher who advised him to focus on character arcs, purposeful writing, and endings before tackling longer works.