artswith Theatre


Freedom of speech takes centre stage in editor’s prison drama


Though suffering low, low times


in prison – “I hurl obscenities at the walls, the heavens and the city. I shock myself with my own fury. I’ve never seen myself like this” – Can survives his 92-day ordeal through companionship within his cell (paper aeroplanes, alfresco lunches, football and Adele) and solidarity without it. Apart from his family (“I am


It’s not often journalists are portrayed as the good guys (or girls). I know – we all know – how vital


our work is to the democratic process, but it’s a fact that all too often goes unnoticed. Yet when it does get noticed,


that’s when the trouble really begins. Take the story of Can Dündar, for example. Editor-in-chief of Turkey’s older


and most prestigious broadsheet, Cumhuriyet, he was arrested in November 2015 when his newspaper received a flash drive containing evidence of illegal government activity. #WeAreArrested tells of his


imprisonment after publishing – against advice from his chief executive – details of how the Turkish state was sending weapons to Syrian Islamist fighters. Performed in the RSC’s The Other


Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, the play is written by Can himself, adapted from his book We Are Arrested: a Journalist’s Notes From a Turkish Prison, and succeeds in transforming his cell into a microphone to the world.


20 | theJournalist


proud to be your son and honoured to be your friend”), it is his fellow journalists who give him the most succour. A former colleague arrives at the prison gates carrying a wooden chair, beginning what will turn into the Vigil of Hope. Other journalists are swift to


follow, organising a rota and arranging coach trips to the prison; this culminates in his colleagues holding their weekly editorial meetings at the gates. This is an uplifting, important,


story to tell and one I’d recommend to anyone who cares about media freedom. As Can says himself:


“#WeAreArrested is an allegory of the imprisonment of an entire society. Our tormentors will vanish from the annals of history, but art and literature will survive for ever. And articulate our dream that the entire world will one day shout ‘We are free!’ ”


Both the screenplay and Can Dündar’s book can be bought from: https://shop.rsc.org.uk/products/ making-mischief-we-are-arrested- day-of-the-living-pb


attitude


by Tim Lezard


Exhibition Their Work is Not Forgotten Edinburgh Museum Until 14 October As you’ll know, 2018 is the centenary year of the first women receiving the right to vote, and this exhibition celebrates the milestone by looking at the individuals who played such an important role in the suffragette movement. Edinburgh was the site of a major protest in 1909, where women took to the streets to campaign for their right to vote. This exhibition follows 2009’s display, A Gude Cause, representing the voices of young people in Edinburgh today and examining how, if at all, they engage with political and social action. www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk


Books Beef Cubes and Burdock John Phillpott Midlands journalist John Phillpott has published a book about his 1950s childhood growing up in rural Warwickshire. Starting his


career as a trainee reporter on the Rugby Advertiser, Phillpott went on to work for numerous regional newspapers during a career spanning nearly five decades. Now retired, he says his book is both a lament and a celebration of a vanished landscape, a lost way of life and a depressingly vastly diminished biodiversity. www.austinmacauley.com/book/ beef-cubes-and-burdock


Film Lucky


On general release from 14 September When Oscar Wilde said “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”, he could have been talking about John Carroll Lynch’s debt feature Lucky. Not that it was lucky for its star, Harry Dean Stanton who, at 91, played a 90-year-old man coming to terms with his approaching death … then died before the film was released. Described by US film critic Mike


D’Angelo as Stanton’s “accidental but ideal swan song”, the film is a meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality and human connection. www.luckyfilm.co.uk


The Children Act On general release from 24 August Hot on the heels of Chesil Beach comes another adaptation of an Ian McEwen novel, The Children Act. Starring Emma Thompson as a high court judge who has to decide whether a teenage Jehovah’s Witness can refuse to have a blood transfusion that will save his life, Richard Eyre’s production beautifully balances the professional with the personal, as Thompson’s husband announces his intention to have an affair with a 28-year-old statistician. www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/film/ the_children_act


Comedy


Rachel Parris It’s Fun to Pretend On tour throughout UK Star of the BBC’s surreal Mash Report, Rachel Parris hits the road with a new show for autumn, in which she


Some of the best things to


see and do with a bit of political bite


For listings email: arts@NUJ.org.uk


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28