Wednesday 23rd July 2025
Blog Page 821

Police evacuate Summertown street over ‘chemical hazard’

Felix Pope
-
0
Police evacuate Summertown street over ‘chemical hazard’

Police closed off a street in Summertown and evacuated over 60 people this morning after discovering a potential chemical hazard.

While carrying out a routine arrest at a property in Elizabeth Jennings Way, police were alerted to the presence of the substance. They subsequently evacuated the house and the road at just after 5.16am.

Several Oxford colleges own student accommodation in the surrounding area. Nearby stand large blocks of Jesus and University second year accommodation, along with several Hertford owned houses. It is not thought that any students have been affected.

While no members of the public are known to have been affected, seven police officers did receive minor irritation. Two have been kept in hospital overnight as a result.

In a statement Thames Valley Police said that the property owner, a 34 year old man from Oxford, had been arrested at the scene. Officers are at the street, and will continue with their search and investigation throughout the day.

It is not believed that the incident is terror related.

Oxford University and colleges used offshore funds to invest in oil extraction

Felix Pope
-
2
Oxford University and colleges used offshore funds to invest in oil extraction

Oxford University’s endowment fund (OUem) and many Oxford colleges have been investing in oil extraction and exploration, the recently leaked Paradise Papers have revealed.

Over half of Oxford’s colleges have placed money in offshore private equity funds, The Guardian reported today. Oxford University deny that the taxpayer has been deprived of any money as a consequence of their investments.

The full list includes All Souls, Brasenose, Christ Church, Corpus Christi, Exeter, Jesus, Lincoln, Magdalen, Merton, Nuffield, Queen’s, Somerville, St Antony’s, St Catherine’s, Trinity, University, Wolfson, and Worcester.

Through this method, large sums of money were deposited in various firms located in tax havens across the world. One of these was Coller International, a Guernsey based private equity firm, which received a £2.6 million investment from the university.

Money received by Coller from the University and its constituent colleges was split into two separate funds, one of which – Coller International Partners V – made significant investments in Shell Oil and several of its subsidiaries and business partners. These latter companies focused on “innovative” new oil extraction and exploration techniques and technologies.

Jesus and Magdalen have each also put over three quarters of a million pounds in Dover Street, a ‘blocker’ corporation known for its investment in controversial retailer BrightHouse, which has been accused of exploiting customers with learning disabilities. Brasenose reportedly invests in a similar scheme.

OUem – which manages the endowments of 26 colleges and the central university – was revealed by leaked papers to have invested around £30 million in a Cayman Islands based fund, Sycamore Partners.

Several colleges told the Guardian that they had now divested from Coller International, and that as OUem invested their endowment for them they had no direct investments anywhere.

Worcester provost Jonathan Bate said that while the college had invested £1.35 million it was now the case that “since the endowment is held at arm’s length in OUEM, Worcester has no direct investments – onshore, offshore, in cyberspace, or anywhere else”.

In a statement Oxford University told Cherwell: “As charitable trusts, Oxford University’s endowment is exempt from UK tax. The taxpayer therefore does not lose a penny from our investments. The investments generate some £80 million a year which is spent on key academic priorities in Oxford.

“These include the majority of our scholarships and bursaries for students, vital research across medicine, the sciences, social sciences and humanities and our globally outstanding teaching. That is £80m for UK education and research which the taxpayer does not have to fund.”

An earlier version of this article published on 10 November repeated claims made in The Guardian newspaper that Oxford University Endowment Management (OUem) could have avoided UBTI taxes through the use of ‘blocker corporations’. OUem in fact used ‘blockers’ to save costs, rather than to avoid taxes.

An improbable journey to the East

Sam Dalrymple
-
0
An improbable journey to the East

In 1953 Nicholas Bouvier and Thierry Vernet left their homes in Geneva for ‘the East’. With a rusty Fiat Topolino, enough money for nine weeks and a vague idea that they wanted to get to Afghanistan, the two set out on a journey that would take up four years of Bouvier’s life. Indeed, during his lifetime he would often proudly proclaim it had taken him longer than Marco Polo to reach Japan. The Way of the World is the story of the first eighteen months of this trip.

Despite being all but unknown in the UK, Bouvier occupies the same cult status in Switzerland and France as Patrick Leigh Fermour or Bruce Chatwin does in the UK. The Way of the World is unique amongst his works, however, in that it depicts his first trip abroad, exuding the passionate fascination of a man who has never left home. His prose is simple and direct, there’s no abstraction of detail and only a bare sketch of his surreal days animates it. There’s no flourish beyond that, and, of course, there’s no need.

Denying themselves “every luxury except one, that of being slow”, the duo creep across Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and finally Afghanistan. Their companions are humble Azeris, paranoid school teachers, wistful Persian truckers and the occasional European spook.

Every few months a lack of cash hits and the duo are forced to settle down in some distant town: indeed, the highlight of the book occurs when they arrive in Iranian Azerbaijan. Trapped by the falling of snow, the two men sink, fascinated, into the Armenian district of Tabriz, working as French teachers as they wait for the snow to melt.

By the time they emerge from their ‘hibernation’ they are true Tabrizis, nit-picking the angle at which hats are worn and marvelling at the differences in the shape of clouds outside their city.

With a passion for simplicity, Bouvier’s writing elevates the mundane to the monumental and transcendental. In eastern Anatolia he writes: “Time passed in brewing tea, the odd remark, cigarettes and then dawn came. The widening light caught the plumage of quails and partridges and quickly I dropped this wonderful moment to the back of a memory like an anchor that one day I could draw up again.

“In the end the bedrock of existence is not made up of family or work or what others think of you but of moments like these when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously. Our feeble hearts could not stand more.”

Throughout their journey Bouvier and Vernet pass through some of the most politically charged landscapes in the world – they are in Iran during the trial of Mossadegh – yet Bouvier never lets such events form any more than a backdrop to the book.

Instead its focus is on those he meets on the road – the songs of gypsies in Serbia, the legends spread by chai khana customers across the deadly Baluchistan road, the folk tales told by prisoners in a Kurdish gaol.

Since Bouvier’s travels, Iran has undergone an Islamic revolution, Afghanistan has been plunged into 30 years of war and, indeed, his stint at working in a bar in the Pakistani city of Quetta would be impossible in today’s radicalised and bandit infested Baluchistan. The Way of the World captures a history that has all but disappeared. Yet, it is much more than a simple story about foreign lands – it is a journey toward the self. “Traveling outgrows its motives” Bouvier writes. “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you.”

‘Lights Over Tesco Carpark’ review – “equal parts inspired and bonkers”

Charles Britton
-
0
‘Lights Over Tesco Carpark’ review – “equal parts inspired and bonkers”

When I heard that there was a student play called Lights Over Tesco Car Park being produced in Oxford, my head was filled with possibilities of what it could be. When I discovered that it was in fact an absurdist work from Poltergeist Theatre framed around audience participation featuring that familiar haunt of students shopping for their milk and ginger nuts, and that it was going to be about hypothetical alien sightings, I knew it was something I needed to see for myself. Fortunately, behind that concept, equal parts inspired and bonkers, lies a play which feels as fresh and unique as it does alien.

From the minute it begins, Lights Over Tesco Car Park wants to confound its audience. The sketches dart ambitiously from phone calls accompanied by miming out the apparition of an alien spaceship, to entire scenes where not a single word is spoken and a child plays endearingly with a flying saucer sweet, all in an attempt to reconstruct what happened during the alien sightings. It is a surreal experience, to say the least. Lights gives you very little to go on, minimal sense of space or time, or anything in the way of plot, and yet it provides plenty to keep the imagination buzzing. I also maintain that this play finds the best use for flying saucers that I have ever seen, transforming a subpar sherbet sweet into everything from an impromptu light filter to a metaphor for human stories. The writing is gleefully absurd. Staging, while very simple, is effective at keeping the audience in the dark, mimicking a sterile interview room, as if we are merely observing an investigation.

That is, until we become part of the interrogation. What sets Lights apart from other student comedies, and its most well-executed asset, is its dedication to audience participation. What is most impressive is how this technique is employed not purely for laughs, but is central to the narrative. The best examples of this are when an audience member has an identity forced upon them, is patronised by an interrogator, and, since they do not know what the actors will ask them and must therefore improvise, they unwittingly fill the position of a traumatised victim trying to recollect what they saw. They do the actors’ work for them. This is audience participation done right. By the end of the play, everybody in the audience knew exactly how to respond to the characters onstage, via commands conveyed to them through minimal instruction.

Above all, Lights just exudes an aura of hilarity, provoking more than a few laughs. Some scenes make it evident just how much fun the cast and crew had producing this gem, such as a scene in which the characters riff off ludicrous headlines they found on the internet. In trying to uncover the mystery of the extra-terrestrial sightings, the investigators expose themselves as being just as weird, if not weirder, than the threat they are tracing.  Lights Over Tesco Car Park revels in the ridiculousness of human life.

If I had to offer any criticism, I would say that, for the admittedly low price of a ticket, some spectators would expect a longer running time: the production is criminally short. With the creative talent on show here, it would not have been impossible to include a few more sketches, even if just to get a few more audience members involved before the play draws to a close.

Overall, Lights Over Tesco Car Park is a bemusing play. This type of production will not appeal to everyone, but for those willing to be confused and surrender themselves to the madness, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had here and a lot to inspire one to try and make sense of the absurdity. Lights’ glowering achievement is that, in its manipulation of its audience, it constantly asks us to re-evaluate whether we were the aliens all along. What is truly alien in Lights are the interactions we have with each other, our encounters with strangers and friends alike.

Life on the streets of Oxford, Scott’s story

Michael Jacobs
-
0
Life on the streets of Oxford, Scott’s story

Last week I got into a conversation with a homeless man I’d seen many times before, but never really spoken to. Scott Hadlow, a man with blond tousled hair and a limp, was sat at one of his usual spots: a warm air vent on Brasenose Lane, where for many he is probably little more than a brief prick of the conscience en route to the Radcam. After speaking generally about his life, from growing up in South Africa, to smuggling Khat – a natural stimulant legal in parts of Africa – to finally breaking his leg at 23 in collision with a car, he said he’d be happy to write a piece on how he came to live on the streets of Oxford and on his current situation.

My Dad who was from Northern Ireland, whom whilst serving in the British Army met with my mum, whom at that time in her life was known as Debbie Allman. But after I was born and my dad moved my surname changed to Hadlow. So I’m now known as Scott Hadlow. I’m not sure if my surname is from Ireland or England as I never got the chance to ask my Dad as when I was 18 months old my Dad, who was a fitness fanatic and serving in the British Army at that time, took me and my mum to South Africa to join the army but sadly when I was two he got shot in Angola and I lost my Dad.

Me and my mum carried on living in South Africa but when I was about 6 we came back to Folkestone where I started my schooling and where me and my mum lived with my nan Betty up until I was about 9 and we returned back to South Africa. Here I did the rest of my schooling where I was forced to learn Afrikaans – the old version of Dutch with a small amount of German.

Even now, living in Oxford at the night shelter at O’Hanlon House and living as a beggar, I often speak to people from Holland and Belgium so I have one clever thing that most people cannot do – being bilingual in another language which is made up of a few languages.

I’ve now been here seven years living in Oxford. Two years ago I was attacked which resulted in an aneurysm bursting at the back of my brain. I now have six aluminium coils wrapped around it to stop it bleeding.  I’m lucky to have survived, as most people die.

Image: Emma Safe

Also where I was hit on my left cheek bone it caused an infection and during my first operation the infection pushed my throat to the side and I stopped breathing, so 4 tubes attached to an oxygen tank were used to help me breathe, so now I have a scar across my front. I have metal plates from knees to ankles in both legs, and my right leg being about 4 inches shorter than my other leg where I have an insole in my trainer because of shortness which affects my hip and lower part of my back. So I live suffering in chronic pain and in the winters I suffer that and the way my life has gone is the reason why I’m addicted to pain killers (i.e. morphine and codeine).

I’ve got to cut this short so I can go back to my begging spot outside Blackwell’s and the alley of Turl Street to meet the man who will be publishing the story of how I came to have a life on the streets.

So my finishing of words will be please carry on helping the homeless, go back to looking after them like people of Oxford used to. Anyone can land in that position, so please help.

Scott Hadlow’s full story is available in My Story, written by homeless and formerly homeless people of Oxford, and sold in Blackwell’s bookshop.

Vegans should embrace the joys of eating

Daisy Chandley
-
16
Vegans should embrace the joys of eating

I have two reasons for not being vegan, and neither of them are that I disagree with veganism. I think veganism is ethically required of me if I follow almost any of my other standpoints: it’s pretty much the best thing we can do for the environment as individuals, and it is an incredibly admirable lifestyle. At least half the vegan hate lurking out there is because people know that they could do more good for the world in their own lives. I was MVFS (mostly vegetarian while sober) for two years, and a vegan for exactly four days, before I gave up. Firstly, because veganism is wound so tightly with clean eating culture and lifestyle Instagram accounts, that I was not able to healthily pursue it. And second, because vegan food is absolutely disgusting.

Whilst the first seems by far the more interesting, others have spoken about it far better than I could — read Ruby Tandoh. Hopefully by this point there are very few who would deny the toxic culture that’s sadly enveloped so much of what could be a beautiful and positive lifestyle, albeit one that’s really into weirdly racist slavery parallels. For now I’ll be looking at the second, which rather than portraying me as a level-headed self-love activist shows me in my true colours: the unchaperoned child at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Food is the highlight of my day. I have more recipe books in my room than fiction books, and, by no slim margin, more actual food in my room at this very moment than reading from my course. I love the gluttonous excitement of a Domino’s pizza arriving, the fact that you know full well that you don’t even particularly like Domino’s pizza, but, much like Ben and Jerry’s, there is an immeasurable comfort in the ugly, greasy, bitter-sweet ritual of the purchase, the unveiling, and the overeating. I love it when you add cream to a warm pan that you’ve been frying bacon in, when the cream turns gently-toasted-marshmallow brown, bubbling and sticking to the sides.

Don’t get me wrong, vegetables make the cut: baby carrots with honey, the mint, tarragon, walnut and feta salad from my local Persian restaurant, pretty much anything with caramelized onions on.

The problem I have, above and beyond veganism’s perils, is that you lose some of the most beautiful and peaceful rituals that exist. There is nothing life-affirming about an activated cashew, a £13 Buddha Bowl that tastes of grass or, let’s be honest, your fifth helping of chickpeas this week.

Of course, from a utilitarian point of view this is pathetic: the horrors of the dairy industry and slaughterhouses are anything but beautiful and peaceful, and the fact that we want to keep eating these things shouldn’t matter, but I do even if it does. Life is too dark and relentless to lose anything this joyful.

Clearly, the solution is to make new rituals around plant-based and cruelty-free food. We must find cathartic recipes and delicious fast food that simply don’t involve the ingredients that hurt the planet and the animals that live on it.

I’m happy to try and do this – honestly I am – but for one reason or another the world just isn’t game. Whilst there are some fantastic vegan places popping up which offer the sort of finger-licking-goodness I’m after – Temple of Seitan in London for instance – and many Asian-inspired restaurants such as Wagamama are mastering the art of ‘you wouldn’t know it’s vegan’, most others are lagging behind. I don’t want quinoa or a range of lukewarm plain vegetables whilst my friends are eating a burger, I just want you to make the burger without meat, eggs or dairy.

I know I’ll never be able to give up non-vegan things entirely, or even just give up meat, but I wish I could make more vegan choices without losing the joy of food. Until restaurants, supermarkets and bloggers accept that veganism is a simple restriction on ingredients rather than a life ban on seasoning, texture and luxury, that’s going to be a difficult task.

Life Divided: The Rad Cam

Priya Vempali and Julia Alsop
-
0
Life Divided: The Rad Cam

For the Rad Cam

Priya Vempali

Let’s face it, none of the Oxford libraries quite compare to the domed beauty that is the Rad Cam. Yes, you may have to elbow your way past throngs of tourists to get to the doors, but once you’re in, it feels like you’ve stepped into a scholar’s wet dream. The dusty books, the deafening silence, the Insta-perfect architecture — it has it all

Tired of staring at your blank screen waiting for a two thousand word essay to magically appear? Just stare up at the mesmerising ceilings and forget your problems for a while. Will it help you academically in any way, shape or form? No. Will it get your cover photo a hundred likes plus? Probably.

Not only is the building itself the most beautiful of the Oxford libraries, the circular citadel is renowned as a chirpsing hub, populated by the best dressed students in the university. Yeah, you may feel a little shabby walking around in your college hoodie, but who cares if that means you get to spend a couple hours mesmerised by the hottie in the Hilfiger jacket to your left? Abundant in inspiration for your next Oxlove, the safe haven provides some well-deserved distraction from that dead tutorial essay you’ve practically given up on.

Even the smallest things make a big difference, like the freezing cold temperature that keeps you from falling asleep at your desk. Annoyed that you can’t bring in coffee or snacks whilst you study? Don’t fear, friends – I’ve managed to sneak in an entire burrito and a milkshake whilst no one was looking. If you can believe, you can achieve.

All in all, the formality of the Rad Cam is ideal for masking your procrastination efforts with the prestige of an academic setting — and isn’t that really what the Oxford experience is all about?

Against the Rad Cam

Julia Alsop

The Rad Cam. It is, to all intents and purposes, a symbol of the rich history of a university that we are more than privileged to attend. Furthermore, it’s absolutely ace Instagram fod- der if you catch a pretty sunset. But it’s a gimmick – beyond the neo-classical façade it is literally the most unpleasant place to work, and yet it always seems to gain prestige and favour over far better libraries (#justicefortheWeston).

The voyage to getting a work spot in the first place is burdensome. First of all, you are forced to battle through the hoards of tourists, obliviously deciding what filter to add their selfie in the Divinity School.

Even once you’ve sweated your way into the building itself, you are faced with the dilemma of finding a space (but where?) and doing so in absolute silence to prevent the library early birds from flashing the kind of penetrating stare that nothing can dull your shame at breathing ‘too loudly.’ As you finally find somewhere, you realise that you are sweating from stress and the bizarre heat of the place, and you haven’t even typed a title yet.

But behold, eventually you notice that there are people there who are taking up ALL the space and literally barely working. These are the worst people of all: the ones looking slightly too dolled-up to be in essay crisis, with an open Facebook tab which they check periodically.

Beware of the Oxlove-seekers, with their faux-whimsical-academic vibe and total lack of regard for their fellow students in denial about their deadlines. Don’t be one of these people: the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality – although they are, after all, already in the Rad Cam.

Oxford professor to take leave over rape allegations

Emily Lawford
-
3
Oxford professor to take leave over rape allegations

Tariq Ramadan, the Oxford Islamic studies professor accused of multiple accounts of rape, has taken a “leave of absence” from the University.

The University released a statement today stating that Ramadan, who has denied the allegations, was leaving “by mutual agreement, and with immediate effect”. It added that Ramadan will not be present at either the University or College during this time, and his teaching, supervising and examining duties in the Faculty of Oriental studies will be reassigned.

The decision follows student backlash at Ramadan’s continuing presence in the Faculty after the allegations first surfaced.

The statement said: “The University has consistently acknowledged the gravity of the allegations against Professor Ramadan, while emphasising the importance of fairness and the principles of justice and due process.

“An agreed leave of absence implies no presumption or acceptance of guilt and allows Professor Ramadan to address the extremely serious allegations made against him, all of which he categorically denies, while meeting our principal concern – addressing heightened and understandable distress, and putting first the wellbeing of our students and staff.”

In a faculty meeting last Tuesday, students voiced their concerns with the University’s handling of the mounting allegations against Ramadan – who has categorically denied the two accusations of rape from French women, as well as allegations made in the Swiss media this week of sexual misconduct against teenage girls in the 1980s and 1990s.

The faculty apologised for their “lack of communication” with students following the allegations, blaming the delay in responding to the claims on the fact that the allegations were made in a foreign country with a different legal system.

They also told students last week that they intended Ramadan to continue to supervise and tutor on his return to Oxford, although arrangements could be made with individual students about how their supervisions would proceed.

Professor Ramadan also reportedly taught a seminar and was seen “laughing” with faculty members in St Antony’s College immediately following the first allegations.

Director of the Middle East Centre Eugene Rogan had warned against jumping to quick judgments about Ramadan. He told students: “It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and protect that trust.”

A number of students expressed their anger last week with the University’s response to the allegations. One postgrad told Cherwell: “Frankly, I’m shocked by how badly the University has dealt with this incident. While Professor Ramadan must be assumed innocent until proven guilty, this does not excuse the absolute lack of communication between the Middle East Centre and affected students.”

Reconsidering the Lobster: Wallace’s Dostoyevsky

Barney Pite
-
2
Reconsidering the Lobster: Wallace’s Dostoyevsky

One of the essays written by David Foster Wallace in his collection, Consider The Lobster is ‘Joseph Frank’s Dostoyevsky’, a lengthy review of the Princeton and Stanford scholar Joseph Frank’s four volume biography of the Russian novelist. A thoughtful and detailed review, Wallace doesn’t shy away from looking in depth at the hardcore criticism and theory that Frank is working with in his biography.

David Foster Wallace, like Dostoyevsky, is one of the people you just have to try. The two have a lot in common. Both are the sort of writers who are good to have read if you’re headed to a cocktail party, both write long and involved books that grapple consciously with the serious philosophical questions that end up defining what it is to be a human being. This underlying theme in Dostoyevsky’s work is acknowledged by Wallace through asterisked sections listing off some the questions which preoccupy Dostoyevsky; ‘What exactly does faith mean?’, or ‘Am I a good person?’. While this stylistic trope can seem confusing, superfluous or even pretentious, Wallace manages to get to the bottom of what Dostoyevsky aimed to address.

When people talk about Wallace, they often talk about the ‘New Sincerity’. The cultural movement which looks fondly back to the honest and sincere literature produced before post-modernism, and which distances itself from the gutless aestheticisms of novels after Joyce. The Stanford scholar Cynthia Haven equates Dostoyevsky with what literary fiction had lost: “Who is to blame for the philosophical passionlessness of our own Dostoyevskys?”, she asks.

Wallace similarly sees Dostoyevsky as a throw-back to a time of philosophical confidence, writing: “The big thing that makes Dostoyevsky invaluable for American readers and writers is that he appears to possess degrees of passion, and conviction and engagement with deep moral issues that we, here today, cannot or do not permit ourselves.”

What Wallace sees in Dostoyevsky, he tries to emulate in his own fiction. The really hot thing about Infinite Jest, Wallace’s gargantuan magnum opus about addiction and tennis, is that it reaches a couple of half-formed conclusions in answer to the questions Dostoyevsky’s asking.

In the last 200 pages of Infinite Jest, a truly extraordinary example of modern fiction, Wallace depicts a wounded demerol addict resisting the offer of anaesthetic. Describing the pain is dealt with, he writes: “He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. Here was a second right here: he endured it…he could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there.” Wallace suggests that we can manage if we just stick with our convictions and endure, or Abide, to use one of his favourite words.

After finishing Infinite Jest, the reader is left with a sense of cautious optimism; despite the moral labyrinth of personhood, there is – Wallace posits, a passage though. Similarly, Dostoyevsky is important because he engages. In a way that’s unusual in a lot of modern literature, novels like Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov take the reader by the horns and demands that we think about the basic problems of the moral world we inhabit. As Wallace famously quipped, “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being”. Dostoyevsky is about what it means to be a fucking human being, and that’s why he matters.

Five Minutes With… John Livesey

Cherwell Stage
-
0
Five Minutes With… John Livesey

This week, we chat to John Livesey, the manager of Klaxon Productions.

Could you tell us a bit about how you got involved in Oxford drama?
It can be scary to start ‘doing drama’ at Oxford – it feels like people know each other already, and you are just some strange, quiet fresher. I was really lucky that the first show I got involved in (Edward II) had a very big, very friendly company full of drama stalwarts. It meant I didn’t think twice next time I was going for an audition. This is my first go at directing but I very much hope to do it again, you won’t get rid of me that easily!

What’s your happiest memory of drama at Oxford?
I’m not even halfway through my degree so I hope there will be a few more moments to choose from if you ask me again in a year! Currently though, some of my happiest memories have been from Random. It’s such a great team and we have a lot of fun, despite the serious subject matter. Fran and I have a similar sense of humour. The artistic eureka-moments we’ve had has made it a very special process.

Have you ever had any complete production nightmares?
I’ve had a few very bad dress-rehearsals. I’ve been in a show that had only rehearsed for a week. The worst was probably a cast-mate missing their cue completely, forcing me to skip 2 or 3 pages: nobody noticed but my heart relocated to Cuba for about 5 minutes.

What’s your favourite play?
Superlatives don’t do justice to the diversity of work out there. I can recommend some good ones though – Big & Small by Botho Strauss, Another Country by Julian Mitchell, An Octaroon by Branden Jacob-Jenkins, The Flick by Annie Baker. Oh, and Angels in America (I say this pre-empting the collective eye-roll).

How would you want to stage it if you had to put it on in Oxford?
Some of these might actually find their way to the stage so I don’t want to give any spoilers: that’s just bad marketing…

Who’s your inspiration?
Ben Whishaw is a role model for me, although that might just be because I have a crush on him! I try not to miss Robert Icke’s shows, and Tarell Alvin McCraney too. I also have the utmost respect for the way Rufus Norris is changing the game at the National. I also find my friends inspiring, back home and in Oxford. I think there’s something rad about understanding that those around you can be just as inspirational as any schmaltzy a-lister.

Do you have any advice for freshers who want to get involved?
Audition. Audition again. Audition again. And if you’re a director? Just risk it: submit the bid and see where the journey takes you. It’ll be horrible, amazing, dreadful and mind-expanding – the best fun you’ll have in this crazy place.

Are you working on any exciting projects at the moment that you can tell us about?
Once we’re done with Random I need a sit down with a hot mug of cocoa. However, KLAXON are also getting started on a bid for Hilary and there are some other things I hope to pursue when I have more time. Going to lectures is another honorable goal, but I don’t want to offer false hope.

1...820821822...2,515Page 821 of 2,515

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley