New podcast episode: 30th anniversary of Border Crossings & 30th anniversary of Rose Bruford online BA; Brilliant Thing goes to Broadway and Schubert to London
News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1236: 2 November 2025
Editorial
Border Crossings, a theatre company that creates theatre productions, festivals and events that bring together artists from around the world, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Its founder, Michael Walling, is still in charge as Artistic Director, and he spoke to me for this week’s new podcast episode.
We spoke at length about their past, current and future work, creative process, funding for devised projects with a long development period, the impact of Brexit and COVID on international collaborations and international touring and how crossing borders, inherent in their name, has become such a politically volatile subject.
But this isn’t the only 30th anniversary we spoke about, as we have known one another for almost that long. We both teach on the online BA in Theatre Studies run by Rose Bruford College—which was axed by the current Principal, Professor Randall Whittaker, but still has to continue for existing students—but Michael has taught on the course since it began nearly thirty years ago, and at that time, I was one of its first students.
It must have been around this time of year or a bit later in 1995 when a leaflet dropped out of my Friends of the Royal Exchange newsletter for a new degree course by distance learning (not online in those days). I didn’t go to university after A levels and a couple of my younger friends had left for college a few weeks before, so I decided to go for it. I filled in the form, got a phone call from the course’s creator, the late Tony Hozier, soon after, and I got my first modules through the post to start in January 1996.
It proved to be an amazing experience that changed my life through what I learned in the modules and on the residential schools and the people I met and got to work with. We meet online these days, which isn’t quite the same, but does mean we get together more often, and it can benefit students around the world who are not able to travel to Sidcup or London once a year.
This morning, I was teaching webinars on the Brecht and Naturalism modules, and have another on Theatre Criticism tomorrow morning. I don’t always know where in the world my students are based, but this morning, I was speaking to people from Liverpool to Spain to Tokyo, all sharing their thoughts and ideas and worries and debating theatre. It’s such a shame it won’t be happening for much longer.
Still on the subject of crossing borders, and in fact oceans, Philip Fisher has looked at two things crossing the Atlantic in opposite directions. Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donohoe’s wonderful Every Brilliant Thing, which I’ve seen twice in Edinburgh performed by Jonny, ten years apart, is to appear on Broadway starring Daniel Radcliffe. Jonny is also half of Jonny and the Baptists, who are always worth seeing.
The Schubert Organisation is travelling the other way, partnering with Trafalgar Entertainment on the new Olympia Theatre, due to open the year after next in London.
If you are planning on seeing some West End theatre in the near future, LOVEtheatre is having a week of deals starting this Friday and running until 16 November. As always, if you buy anything from links on our site or in this newsletter, we may get a small cut at no cost to you, which helps towards keeping our site and this newsletter running.
Out in the Hills, a new LGBTQIA+ festival at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, will feature Ian McKellen, Graham Norton, Val McDermid, Armistead Maupin and more with Alan Cumming.
Breaking the Code Royal & Derngate Northampton, Landmark Theatres and Oxford Playhouse in association with Liverpool Everyman and HOME Manchester at HOME Manchester
Elmet The Javaad Alipoor Company at Loading Bay, Bradford
Eureka Day Nottingham Playhouse at Nottingham Playhouse
Barriers (Deafinitely Theatre, Birmingham Rep, Camden Peoples’s Theatre and Leeds Playhouse) - HOME Manchester, Manchester, –
The Other Neville - Oldham Library & Lifelong Learning Centre, Oldham,
Sherlock Holmes and the Hunt for Moriarty (Blackeyed Theatre In association with Theatre Royal Winchester and South Hill Park) - Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, –
