The Dutchman by LeRoi Jones; The Crate Gallery, 2014

Kedar Williams-Stirling as "Clay," September 2014

   Jotham Annan is a RADA-honed actor and director of stage and screen, whose credits include the BBC's Holby City and Casualty, and versions of As You Like It and The Browning Version (everyone's favourite Rattigan?). To disclaim, he is also my cousin. I'm proud

   Over the past month, I have provided photography and costume styling for a new production by Jotham of 1964's The Dutchman, an interracial two hander written by Jones, later Amiri Baraka, whom I have discovered late in life. An African-American playwright, activist, writer and critic with a penchant for trenchant monologues and non-sequiturs of the disquieting kind, judging from this particular work, he was a natural attractor of the controversy that dogs the outspoken; doubtless, I will find pronouncements and quotes of his to embrace and discard with time

   Tonight ushers in the opening night at Notting Hill's The Crate Gallery, helmed by my old friend Matthew Gerrish. The Crate is not known for its voluminousness and thus each performance of this short run (tonight to Friday, this Sunday and next Wednesday and Thursday) will accommodate less than 30 people only. Nevertheless, compromised though I may be, it is worth purchasing tickets for next week's performances, which were added after the promising selling out of this week's

   In these days of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, to name but two, a text like The Dutchman is not only entertainment, but something of a yardstick for America's entangled multiracial structure, exactly 50 years prior, with which to compare to today. And it is exactly this challenge to muse on where America has been going in light of these atrocities that makes it worth producing today

BON

http://www.thecrate.co.uk/events/performance/dutchman/

Pop Culture Thumbs-Up - 13/05/09

   Heavy dataflow - the gynoid (that's a robot in female form, kids) that's begun educating the youth of Japan is capable of six basic emotions, including anger and disgust. And will probably give birth to Skynet somewhere down the line

   As Star Trek returns to our screens this month, I think it's only right that we hear from its most iconic alien and how he felt about returning to the series. You will believe a Vulcan can cry

   Cheers and Frasier's delectable snark goddess Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia in a Broadway production of The Addams Family? I should emigrate

   Not entirely cultural, but Greece have stepped up to ban Google Street View. I applaud the progressiveness of the service, but hate that it now takes the fun out of my imagining myself as a little dot on a large map

   And I've finally written an article for MensFlair. Now all I have to do is try and keep it up