Culture 101
Chris Thorpe on his week-long intensive helping Kiwi writers tackle big issues
Manchester writer and theatre maker Chris Thorpe spent the week in Aotearoa running an intensive workshop, Conversations for Impossible Times, organised by Playmarket and the British Council. The workshop brought together 16 practitioners including Pip Hall, Sam Brooks, Ni Dekkers-Reihana and Alice Canton to explore how theatre can engage with subjects that feel overwhelming, from nuclear disarmament to climate change to economic justice. Thorpe, a seven-time Fringe First winner who has written for the Royal Court and the Royal Exchange Manchester, got into theatre through a clerical error on a university application form at 17, applying for American Studies and ending up in an old church in Leeds instead. He also gives a pointed response to the government's proposal that arts funding gaps should be filled by private philanthropists.
