Review: Storypod is a Great Interactive Learning Aid for Kids

The parent claims that during last week's cold snap, her daughter was made to do the session in a t-shirt at Martin High School in Anstey, Leicestershire.

From the opening titles of The Seven Faces of Jane: “In the summer of 2021, eight filmmakers were invited to create a section of a feature film without any knowledge of what came before or after it. They were encouraged to stay true to their own unique life experience, vision, and style.”

Shot by cinematographer Luc Montpellier in muted tones that almost make the film look like it was shot in black-and-white and then tinted to match the mood of each moment, writer/director Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (based on the book by Miriam Toews) centers on a religious community whose normally powerless women are tasked with finding a solution to a rampant problem within the colony. Several of the men have been committing sexual assaults in the night. Once the perpetrators were identified, the men left the community for a time, and the women had to decide whether they wanted to forgive the offending men and carry on with life as normal or whether they want to leave the colony and start a new one somewhere else, taking only the children with them.

Princess Ivona inspires Trap Door Theatre to show us what it does best: Take a clever script and turn it into a carnival with exaggerated style and physical performance, while remaining true to the playwright’s original concept. In this case, Jenny Beacraft directs playwright Witold Gombrowicz’s 1935 tragicomedy, an anti-nationalist satire on class and identity, and embellishes it with an exuberant use of props, costumes and makeup. Beacraft, who grew up in Chicago, is now based in Barcelona; she has participated in several Trap Door international productions.

Listening to Dry Cleaning feels like having the perfect background-noise playlist on; the music and lyrics mimic conversations that we all make up in our minds in the shower, driving to work, or as we drift off to sleep. Vocalist Florence Shaw’s writing reminds me of the things I should have said but the time was never right, or the passing thoughts and memories that bounce around in my mind as I move through life daily – nothing so obviously profound, just every-day experience within myself. Shaw invites listeners to acknowledge a creativity in simply observing without the need to narrate grandiose stories; to not try so hard to make something groundbreaking out of every idea and just let it be what it is. Her patchwork of conversation, feelings, thoughts, and observations play coyly with the rise, swell, and journey of each song. Driving bass and twinkling guitar perhaps mirror an inner voice playing devil’s advocate, an ex-lover, friend, or someone not yet introduced.