New season's plays announced

Jul 11 2008 By John Slim

HIGHBURY Little Theatre will launch next season on September 23 with The Lady In The Van, the Alan Bennett comedy.

It tells the story of the woman whom Bennett first met when she was living in the street near his home in Camden Town and who subsequently lived in her van in his garden for 15 years.

Highbury's first studio production of the season will follow from October 20-25. It will be Ladies' Day, by Amanda Whittington, the increasingly popular comedy about four women who work as fishfilleters and whose big day takes the form of a visit to Ladies' Day.

* WORKSHOPS in music, singing, dance, stage combat and script-writing will be among those on offer when Hagley Catholic High School stages a community arts fun day tomorrow.

Professionally-run workshops will continue throughout the day from 10am-4.30pm.

Community Arts Officer Jane Ward reckons that people will rarely get the chance to choose from so many different types of workshop.

She says: "We have drawn together a really diverse range of professional artists who are all specialists in their field. Those workshops that prove particularly popular may be reintroduced as short courses or more extended workshops later in the autumn."

A full programme of all the workshops is available at: www.hagleyrc.com. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

* THERE is just time to catch Birmingham Theatre School's production of Five Kinds of Silence, the stage version of the award-winning radio play, which was one of several with which Shelagh Stephenson established herself. It closes its three-night run at Birmingham's Crescent Theatre tonight.