Playing Shakespeare’s Caesar As Idi Amin Or Mobutu

Gregory Doran, director of the RSC’s new Julius Caesar: “Then you look at African history over the past 50 years … The sequence frequently is of leaders coming to power on a wave of popularity, pulling power to themselves in a one-party state, feeling that they have to seize control. Then, that being followed by a military coup which is followed itself by a much worse dictator and then, possibly, civil war. That’s Julius Caesar:you’re describing.”

BBC Radio Host Held In Zimbabwe For Alleged Visa Violations

Petroc Trelawny, a presenter on BBC Radio 3, was arrested last week for allegedly working in Zimbabwe without an employment permit. (He was emceeing a music festival on a volunteer basis.) A judge dropped all charges on Monday, but immigration officials are refusing to return Trelawny’s passport and want to try him for violating the terms of his tourist visa.

Protesters Disrupt Israeli National Theatre’s Performance At Shakespeare’s Globe

At the Habima Theatre’s London performances of The Merchant of Venice, “spectators were met with airport-style security, advance notices of ‘conditions of entry’ and a note by the box office informing patrons that missiles, among other items, would not be allowed into one of London’s most beloved theatrical addresses.” (Protesters managed to interrupt the show briefly nevertheless.)

Why Make A Reality TV Series About A Ballet Company?

“‘I had a couple of real obsessions with worlds I wanted to explore dramatically,’ Jane Tranter, the head of BBC Worldwide Productions, which is producing the show [titled Breaking Pointe], said recently. ‘One was ballet, the other was a convent.’ Each, Ms. Tranter said, offered ‘a world which is a hidden world: there’s what the public sees, and what happens underneath’.”