bringing it all up to date

Being rather new to this blogging lark, it's taken me an inordinate amount of time to set it all up ... but here we are at last!

It's been a rather eventful few weeks. At Easter I visited Malawi, and had some very positive meetings with various partners there. The British Council are interested in supporting AFTER MIKUYU as part of the Malawi Arts Festival I am in the first stages of organising, and I met with the other members of the Malawi Arts Festival Organising Group where we decided on the first steps. Watch this space for develoments, but if all goes well, this will be a very busy year.

As soon as I returned from Malawi, I was straight into organising Bilimankhwe Youth Arts' visit to Hampstead Theatre as part of the National Theatre's Connections Youth Festival. We were taking SCARY PLAY, with its young cast of 16, a touring set including doors set in frames on wheels, a dentists's chair, a coffin .... thanks to all the wonderful crew at Hampstead it all went smoothly. Judith Johnson, the playwright, was in the audience, and fortunately absolutely loved our production of her play. The youth theatre members were on a high for weeks.

A few days after the Hampstead show, I started to feel unwell, with chills and spiking fevers. A trip to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases confirmed what I suspected ... I had Malaria. And so did my husband Matthew, and one of my children, Freddy. So it was 5 days in hospital taking the dreadful quinine sulphate. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a much less nasty cure for the disease, but the medics want to teach us a lesson for not taking anti-malarials (naughty naughty!). Whatever, I don't recommend quinine for anyone wanting to keep hold of their stomach contents. Enough said. Next time I'm definitely taking the tablets.

I've now started work on my Theatre Consortium colleague, Michael Walling's latest production for his company, Border Crossings. Called THE DILEMMA OF A GHOST, it's written by celebrated Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo and is a co-production with the National Theatre of Ghana. Spent the week finalising and confirming the tour details - so far it's opening at Leeds University and touring to Leicester Phoenix, The Bernie Grant Centre and the South Bank before going on to Ghana. Should be wonderful - see www.bordercrossings.org.uk for more details.