mirandaemmerson.bsky.social
Novelist (4th Estate); Dramatist (BBC); and independent scholar of radio, BBC history and British national identities. 🏴🏴🇫🇷🇵🇱
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 20
#Theatresky
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‘You live in Wales… Goodness… Well, I suppose… It must be very green…’
…
‘Have you *thought* of moving to London?’
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Kristin Lavransdatter - classic trilogy of novels about a woman’s life in 14C Norway. So good, so modern in its prose, fascinating.
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 19
#Theatresky
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I know people still grieving. Two of the industries I work in were torn apart. It altered the development of millions of kids - hugely evident in schools. Had a profound effect on the medics who worked through it. The vaccines led to dozens of new treatment pathways and medicines. It was profound.
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I was an only child in a small family so sat silently in the corner of a lot of very smoky pubs unable to really see or understand what was going on. If it was a mealtime there’d be crisps with a twist of salt. Adults seemed to entirely talk about people having affairs. Which was also very 70s.
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 18
#Theatresky
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Additionally, many people with kids with additional needs use state schools and some state schools are really good at offering support.
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All four. Lived in on near two of them (London and Cardiff). Husband comes from third (Belfast) so we visit family there and have worked and holidayed in Edinburgh.
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 17
#Theatresky
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I always felt he unbalanced the ensemble in This is Us because he (and the actor playing his father) were so emotionally present and intense that they made the rest of the show look a bit wan by comparison. I’m really pleased to see him leading things.
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The storytelling in the prologue of episode 8 was a miniature masterclass. And Sterling K Brown is such a wonderful lead. It slightly has Lost vibes, and I do think it will fall apart when stretched too far, but I loved the first season.
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 16
#Theatresky
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster (radio plays don’t get posters).
Day 15
#Theatresky
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster (radio plays don’t get posters).
Day 14
#Theatresky
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A vivid early 2020 memory is taking eldest kid to London to see HP & the Cursed Child. Chinese visitors were wearing masks and I told her not to worry. Within months both the reality of pandemic and my kids’ relationship to Rowling/Potter were utterly changed and, indeed, they seem intertwined.
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I once taught a version of this to a load of Year 5s. It was my first day teaching anyone anything and I had no idea where to pitch things. I scrapped the class but for years afterwards kids who’d been in the class would come up to me and talk to me about it. It really mattered to them.
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We shape views of the world using language. Our conception of national identity is not stable from one moment to the next, nor is it identical to our neighbours. Now: let me teach you more about the power of language. [A really important lesson commences].
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Ironically, of course, the Snuffster is quite English…
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Yes, the English outlook around class and society is not quite the same as the Welsh (or Scottish or N Irish). There’s lots of nuanced bits of positioning, around the arts and politics as well. Sport. Money. Even race itself. Thousands of tiny differences.
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster (radio plays don’t get posters).
Day 13
#Theatresky
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 12
#Theatresky
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Wasn’t it incredible! Spent so many hours read and re-reading it…
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Someone else mentioned Kate Charlesworth - as well as her more recent gay histories she was making feminist history and science comic books going back to the 80s. I had them. They were great…
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 11
#Theatresky
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To be fair, 18C conceptions of Englishness (inside England) did lean heavily into not being Welsh/Irish. But then Englishness abroad constructed itself by not being Indian, West African etc. And the whole thing got quite diffuse because the English did not stay in England…
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 10
#Theatresky
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Quite fond of Bao Selecta in Cardiff…
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 9
#Theatresky
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 8
#Theatresky
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Always baffled me how classic Eng Lit worlds, deeply familiar with canonical prose and poetry, don’t think drama matters after Shakespeare. People outside theatre don’t read plays, thereby missing out on vast amounts of experimentation, political discussion, mixing of genres, structural innovation…
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An Old Fashioned will make your Whisky sweet.
Pedro Ximenez makes amazing ice cream (if you can be bothered!)
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 7
#Theatresky
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I realise this is anecdotal but I know someone studying engineering at a top Russell Group who says that virtually every other engineering student in her year intends to go into banking/finance because engineering has become a proxy for ‘good at maths/problem solving’. If true, also a problem…
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Choose 20 plays that have stayed with you or influenced you. One play per day for 20 days, in no particular order
No explanations, no reviews, just a cover or poster.
Day 6
#Theatresky