BARD FROM THE BARN
barntheatre. org. uk
The enterprising Barn Theatre in Cirencester has come up with the splendid idea of creating a series of monologues based on Shakespearean characters remodelled for the modern Covidrestricted world. You can dive in and take your pick from 92 snippets: Cleopatra calling her dying Antony in intensive care as she is not allowed a hospital visit; Mark Antony addressing the nation via videolink from his home following Julius Caesar’s murder; and Puck filming himself cycling through the city one midsummer night delivering food.
Smart, funny, witty, wise and tragic, these speeches demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Shakespeare, especially in this era. Free to view.
FAN FAVOURITE: Don Quixote’s Marianela Nunez
focused on the planet
– but from an astronaut’s perspective.
In 2016, Peake became the first British astronaut to complete a spacewalk on the International
Space Station. TV viewers gasped in awe and wonder when, clad in a space suit emblazoned with a Union Jack patch, he stepped into space, 400 kilometres above the Earth. “Below me I could see my boots,” he writes. “And below my boots I could see Western Australia.”
It was the culmination of six years of intensive training, which involved learning Russian in St Petersburg, living in caves in Sardinia and being apart from his wife Rebecca and two young sons for long spells.
Peake is a shining example of the sacrifices astronauts make to achieve their goal. After all,
he says, “we need people to push the boundaries and if I’m not prepared to do it myself, why should I expect anyone else to?”.
As a shy schoolboy, he never imagined he’d become a world- famous astronaut. His upbringing was “ordinary” but his horizons widened after joining the Army Air Corps at 19.
It was the start of a glittering career that saw him become an Apache helicopter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot, with postings to Afghanistan, Bosnia and Northern Ireland.
In 2009 he was selected from 4,800 applicants to join the European
Space Agency’s astronaut programme. He later joined the Principia space mission, spending six months in space. “All the training, all the studying, all the doubt and uncertainty along the way, the decision to walk away from a job I loved, the upheaval inflicted on Rebecca and the family... it hadn’t been in vain,” he says. “I’d got the dream mission.”
His accounts of blasting into orbit at 25 times the speed of sound and floating, weightless, around the space station are enthralling. Fasten your seatbelt for an exhilarating read.