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Silver Sound 31 March 2017: World Music, Theatre and Dance

Posted on 1st April, 2017 in BCfm Radio, Silver Sound, Theatre

Today’s guest was Stephen Pritchard, a Bristol-based drama consultant and practitioner, lecturer, workshop leader and music enthusiast.  Stephen is also a co-founder, with Peter Gabriel, of WOMAD, the world music and dance festival. He first met Gabriel when he was working as a music journalist on the Bristol Recorder (later the Recorder), a print and audio music magazine. Stephen and Peter Gabriel were inspired to establish WOMAD because of their concerns that many British and American musicians were using music from other cultures without acknowledging its provenance. Thirty five years on, WOMAD is still going strong.

Stephen has worked with Ekome National Dance Company, and written, directed and performed in community theatre. He taught drama for 27 years, studying and experimenting with the French theatre practitioner Antonin Artaud’s work through pedagogy and performance. He has also produced a series of best-selling Drama DVDs for global distribution. He has led drama workshops in many countries, for participants of all ages. Stephen has a life-long fascination with visionaries, William Blake in particular, and has also developed a strong interest in the ideas of Carl Jung. He has contributed to the Jung Lecture series with lectures on Artaud and Blake, and most recently with a drama workshop entitled Theatre of the Mind.

Today’s show was part of our Radiothon – 24 hours of sponsored live radio – celebrating BCfm’s tenth birthday. BCfm receives no core funding, so this year we are aiming to raise £10,000 to keep the station on the air for another ten years! Today’s 10 am to 11 am Silver Sound show was sponsored by SilverWood Books of Bristol – who are also celebrating their tenth birthday this year. SilverWood Books has established a reputation as one of the UK’s most professional and supportive publishing services companies. Their friendly, expert team works closely with self-publishing authors at each stage of the publication process. SilverWood has helped hundreds of writers publish books in a wide variety of titles in popular genres and formats, from memoir and family history to bestselling crime fiction (and I’m one of them!).

Stephen is a fabulous story teller and had some hilarious tales to tell about those early WOMAD days. We also played some music from Shu-De, the Tuvan throat singers whose album Voices from the Distant Steppe Stephen produced in 1994.

Find out more about WOMAD here.

There’s some information on the Bristol Recorder here .

Stephen’s lecture on Antonin Artaud is available for download here.

For information about Silversound see https://www.bcfmradio.com/