What Joanna Lumley Really Thinks Of Her AbFab Character

“I loved [Patsy], too. Those two when they were sozzled were the most repellent and therefore hysterically funny, risible creatures. … And then to my amazement the country went, ‘But we’re like that!’ And you think, gee-whiz, darlings, please don’t be like that! … I much prefer all that Victorian stiff upper lip. Carry on. ‘I say, your leg looks as though it’s been shot off!’ ‘By God, sir, so it has’.”

Is There Any Point In Drama School?

Lyn Gardner: “Traditional routes into the profession via established drama schools such as RADA [or] LAMDA … are now supplemented by hundreds of other courses – some at universities, some at more recently established [specialized] schools … [But] many of these courses offer their students little in the way of career advice and development. After taking their money and providing the requisite teaching hours, the courses simply send students out to sink or swim.”

When Film Was Explosive By Nature

“From 1895 to the early 1950s, all commercially available 35mm film, stills, negatives and even X-rays were made out of cellulose nitrate: a fragile, combustible, unstable, highly-flammable substance that was also used in explosives.” But “[a]ccording to the eminent curators at the British Film Institute (BFI), cellulose nitrate film is the most vivid film stock ever created.”

Via Soap Opera, Getting Information To Displaced Haitians

“First, Haitians received food and shelter; now the moving image has joined the humanitarian response. All over this rattled capital city, Port-au-Prince, outdoor screens are popping up, as a handful of organizations race to produce programming that entertains and informs the hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps without televisions or radios.”

Audience Choice: How Should Mozart’s Zaide End?

“If you haven’t heard of [the opera], it’s because the composer never got around to finishing it and it wasn’t found in his papers until after his death. … When Wolf Trap started thinking about staging ‘Zaide,’ the question immediately surfaced of how they wanted to end it. There were plenty of options.” This weekend the audience gets to pick one.