Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on Thursday 13th May 2021. Join us for a fascinating evening with award-winning playwright and actress Lolita Chakrabarti in conversation with journalist Matt Wolf. Streamed live from an Oxford venue and chaired by Dr Sos Eltis, the event will cover Lolita’s wide-ranging career and hone in on her most recent play, Hymn, at the Almeida Theatre.

Lolita Chakrabarti is an award-winning playwright and actress. Writing credits include the award-winning stage adaptation of Life of Pi, which will open in the West End in 2021, the ambitious Invisible Cities (MIF), Hymn (Almeida) and Red Velvet, which opened at the Tricycle Theatre before transferring to London’s West End and New York. Acting credits include playing Queen Gertrude, opposite Tom Hiddleston, in Sir Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (RADA), Fanny & Alexandra (Old Vic) and Free Outgoing (Royal Court). A Casual Vacancy (BBC1/HBO), To Provide All People (BBC2), Beowulf (ITV), Jekyll and Hyde (ITV), Riviera (Sky), Criminal (Netflix) and Defending The Guilty (BBC).

Matt Wolf is an American theatre critic based in London, where he has spent his entire professional life. He moved to the UK directly upon graduating from Yale, where he read English and was co-arts editor of the Yale Daily News (a good place to begin). Soon upon arrival in London, he found work in a self-created job as arts and theatre writer for the Associated Press (AP), where he remained for 21 years. 

Along the way, following brief stints at the Wall Street Journal/Europe and The Hollywood Reporter, Matt became London theatre critic for Variety from 1992-2005, during which time he was freelancing regularly for The International Herald Tribune – now the International New York Times. Following the departure from his long-held post of the august Sheridan Morley, Matt became London theatre critic for the IHT/INYT, and in 2009 was thrilled to help birth The Arts Desk – an arts-centred website that within a few years of its inception was named best specialism journalism website at the Online Media Awards in London. He remains theatre editor at that site and reviews there across the cultural spectrum.

In addition to his journalism, Matt has collaborated on two books – one about Guys and Dolls, the other about Les Miserables – and is the author of Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom, an account of the theatre and film director Sam Mendes’s extraordinary tenure at one of London’s premier theatrical addresses. Matt sits on the panel of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and is on the faculty of both NYU/London and the V&A Museum; he can be heard regularly on various radio programmes for both the BBC and Monocle. 

Following an acclaimed, sold-out live-streamed and on-demand runs, Lolita Chakrabarti's Hymn will be broadcast on Sky Arts on Sunday 18 April at 9pm. The world premiere of this production was directed by Blanche McIntyre and features actors Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani. Sky Arts is free to watch on Freeview Channel 11. Sky and NOW subscribers can also watch Hymn on-demand after the broadcast.

Lolita Chakrabarti is a HCP Visiting Fellow part of the Humanities Cultural Programme.

Big Tent - Live Events! Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. 'Liveness'. Biographies:

Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK’s leading names in contemporary performance.

She was born in Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King’s Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.

In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.

Her numerous theatre credits include 2071 and Night Songs for the Royal Court, The Cherry Orchard for the Young Vic, The Trial of Ubu for Hampstead Theatre, Henry VI Part III (to date her only Shakespeare production) for the RSC and A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Seagull at the National Theatre. She has also directed opera, working with the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. An exponent of Stanislavski techniques and naturalism, her style was strongly influenced by the time she spent working in Eastern Europe early in her career. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.

Mitchell’s work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television with work including The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Turn of the Screw. In 2011, together with video maker, Leo Warner, Mitchell devised an immersive video installation called Five Truths for the Victoria and Albert Museum which explored the nature of truth in theatrical production.

Ben Whishaw is a multi-award winning English actor in film, television, and theatre. He trained at RADA, and his work in theatre quickly brought acclaim including a much-lauded Hamlet at the Old Vic with Trevor Nunn in 2004. He has been directed by Katie Mitchell multiple times, including The Seagull at the National Theatre in 2006, and Norma Jeane Baker of Troy at the Shed in New York last year. In television his work ranges from BAFTA-winning performances in Rupert Goold's Richard II for the BBC in 2012 to A Very English Scandal in 2018. Among many film roles, he is perhaps best known for taking on the part of Q in the Bond films since 2012’s Skyfall and for delighting audiences young and old as the voice of Paddington in the hit movies in 2014 and 2017.

A Book at Lunchtime discussion tracing the cultural legacy of the GDR with Karen Leeder, Dennis Tate, Sara Jones, Marc Silberman and Tom Smith 'Rereading East Germany: Literature and Film in the GDR' is the first volume to address the culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a historical entity, but also to trace the afterlife of East Germany in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It provides a 'rereading' of East Germany and its legacy as a cultural phenomenon free from the prejudices that prevailed while it existed.
The editor of the volume Karen Leeder (Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Oxford) discusses these issues with Dennis Tate (Professor of German Studies, University of Bath), Sara Jones (Senior Birmingham Fellow, University of Birmingham) and Marc Silberman (Professor of German, University of Wisconsin-Madison). The discussion is chaired by Tom Smith (Lecturer in German, University of Oxford).