Latest news with #Blackfriars
Glasgow Times
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
This Glasgow pub helps comic to Edinburgh's Fringe Fetsival
The 27-year-old says before he found out about the funding there was 'no way' he would have been able to do a show at the Fringe. READ NEXT: Derelict sites to be regenerated and jobs created as £3.5m funding announced He told the Glasgow Times: 'I couldn't have afforded it, there was no two ways about it, so I'd written it off. 'I feel like we need to keep fighting for Scottish representation.' Calling the support 'amazing', he continued: 'Without Blackfriars and Brass Tacks, I wouldn't be doing it. 'Chris Conway has put his money where his mouth is in terms of supporting acts - there's nobody more supportive.' (Image: Two Trolleys) Jack, from Cumbernauld, previously worked in a series of minimum wage jobs before he decided to 'give comedy a go' during lockdown, saying it had been 'scratching at the back of my head throughout my life'. He said: 'I wasn't a massive fan of comedy, it was surface level, but as soon as I got into it, I was obsessed.' Since starting his comedy career three years ago, Jack has been cutting his teeth as part of a collective called Wholesome Prison Blues who perform mixed bill shows for inmates at prisons across Scotland. He has also taken part in the Roast Battles League and was awarded the Worldwide MVP title in 2024. This isn't the first time Blackfriars and Brass Tacks have supported Jack, after they also funded a trip to Los Angeles May to compete in a Roast Battle at iconic venue The Comedy Store, giving him an opportunity to gain fans across the Atlantic. READ NEXT: Lewis Capaldi performs new single on The Tonight Show Jack's Fringe show Before I Forget focuses on the theme of Dementia which he says has affected a lot of people in his family. He explained: 'It's about all the things I'm happy and not happy that one day I'm going to forget. 'I take the audience through dealing with the family members that have had dementia and my experience. 'Usually when you go to a Fringe show they put the sad bit at the end, but I've flipped it.' He added: 'We're two weeks out and I'm bricking it [...] but I've got good people around me.' (Image: Two Trolleys) Chris Conway, co-owner Blackfriars, said: 'My take on the Fringe is its almost completely inaccessible to someone like Jack because you can't afford to not work for a month and put all the money in to be there for a month. 'I think there's a lot of talent that don't go to it now because of that. 'The Fringe a worldwide thing but there needs to more of a push for Scottish acts. 'Jack is an absolute fireball of energy and comedic talent.' Katie Palmer, of Brass Tacks Comedy, continued: "Working with Blackfriars to support Jack Traynor is one of the things I'm most proud of in my career so far. 'Blackfriars as a comedy club are so values led and the way they stepped up to support Jack financially shows that. 'Jack is one of my favourite comics in the country. 'The very first time I saw him perform I knew I had to work with him in the future. And I've never been in the company of someone funnier. 'He's a true talent and it's terrifying to think that a local act as brilliant and talented as Jack wouldn't be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe without this support.' Jack Traynor: Before I Forget will be at Pleasance Courtyard from Wednesday, July 30 until Sunday, August 24.
Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Shakespeare signature shows his London was as bureaucratic as ours
You might have seen his plays, read his sonnets, visited Stratford-upon-Avon or the Globe theatre and paid all manner of homage to William Shakespeare, but you will never get closer to the man himself than this. On the bottom of an old property deed usually stored in the stacks of the London Archives is one of only six surviving examples of the Bard's signature, which is about to be shown in public. The rare document — part of Shakespeare in London, opening on June 30 — will be on display alongside other artefacts that illustrate the capital at the time of the playwright and the impact he had on other writers down the years, including the poet John Keats. 'It's been really exciting to pull this together — the material doesn't get displayed that often,' said Sharon Tuff, the collections and engagement manager at the London Archives. 'We want to show Shakespeare's impact, but also life in London in his times.' Compared with a modern equivalent, the property deed looks very grand and is written in flowing hand on a large piece of parchment. It details a property in Blackfriars, within walking distance of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, which Shakespeare appears to have bought as an investment with some associates. At the bottom, above an attached seal, is Shakespeare's signature, written in 1613, three years before his death. The 'William' is clear to read though the 'Shakespeare' is rather squished, suggesting that he, like many of us, was familiar with trying to squeeze a name into a small box on a form. The location of the house he purchased is not clear; it was close to Puddle Wharf, or what is now St Andrew's Hill, but the building would have been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. • Hereford letter hints at new twist in drama of Shakespeare's wife The archives, which belong to the City of London Corporation, are displaying other items to flesh out the capital's Shakespeare connections. Most striking is the Civitas Londinum, a 1560s map; the archives's version is one of only three extant copies. It shows a capital at turns both strange and recognisable to us today. The city of the map is enveloped by the old London Wall, beyond which lie fields. To the west, buildings creep down 'Fleate Streate' towards Westminster. To a modern eye, names like 'More Gate' and 'Holburne' read like a Tube map in need of proofreading. Some landmarks are recognisable, albeit in a very different form. 'Charing Crosse' stands in the middle of a roundabout, while St Paul's Cathedral is there in its pre-Great Fire form, without its spire. London Bridge, meanwhile, is packed with buildings. Other places of note on the map have faded from prominence or vanished altogether. Christchurch Greyfriars survives only as a ruin of the Blitz today, but the original church dominated the 16th-century landscape. South of the river there were arenas near where the modern-day Globe now stands, used for the baiting of bears and bulls. • Meet Shakespeare the Shoreditch hipster, as his astonishing lost theatre is unveiled That may well have been the world Shakespeare knew, but his impact on the capital only grew down the centuries. The display also includes a facsimile of his First Folio owned and annotated by John Keats. The copy is filled with the poet's marginalia and underlining. He was particularly interested in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part 1, Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. Some of his notes are lengthy, and the plays even inspired him to jot down the odd verse on some blank paper. Yet Shakespeare's signature is the box-office draw for this display, which will run until September. Tuff says it is a 'relatable' document, showing Shakespeare engaging with the bureaucracy we know well even today. • Unearthed book proves Shakespeare 'cribbed from Dante' The clerk who drew up the document had a less-than-perfectionist approach, which we may also find familiar. For instance, a large section of the parchment has been simply crossed out. 'He made a mistake,' Tuff said. 'He isn't going to rewrite it all. He's just scored it through.'
The National
03-06-2025
- Business
- The National
How Edinburgh became Scottish capital truly fit for a king
Fittingly I am concluding with our capital city, telling the story of Edinburgh in ancient times, ie before 1800, ending with the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 and the greatest missed opportunity in Scottish history. Last week I showed how Edinburgh began to develop from a small settlement through the trinity of a fortification, religious institutions and royal patronage, as happened with all our eight cities. READ MORE: This is how the grandeur of Edinburgh began with a rock Despite the fact that much of Scotland's ancient records were stolen and destroyed by various English invaders from Edward I to Oliver Cromwell, archaeologists and historians have been able to put together a record of Edinburgh's history from the earliest times. There are gaps in our knowledge, for sure, but we do have a fairly coherent history of Edinburgh, especially as the second millennium wore on and the city became the nation's capital. Before that status was achieved, however, in the 12th and 13th centuries the castle and Holyrood Abbey were the principal drivers of the growing economic prowess of Edinburgh, but it was other foundations under the royal patronage of King David I, King William I the Lion (or Lyon), and their successors which really boosted Edinburgh. As I wrote last week, in 1143 David had given the Augustinian monks at Holyrood the right to found a burgh, the Canongate, between their church and 'my burgh', ie Edinburgh, and it is thought that he also began the long process of developing Edinburgh as a centre of mercantile trade, particularly through the establishment of 'tofts' – strips of land to either side of the High Street and Canongate allocated to merchants as long as they built a house and conducted their business in the burgh. King David is also said to have founded the parish church of Edinburgh dedicated to St Giles, but no trace of that original church remains today. The current St Giles Cathedral building was started in the 14th century. King Alexander II also favoured Edinburgh and often stayed in the castle and Holyrood Abbey. In 1230 he handed over a manor which he owned to the Dominican order, the Blackfriars. They erected a large monastery in the area south of the High Street and as with all such institutions, it added greatly to the local economy. So, too, did the monastery of the Franciscans, the Greyfriars, which was established two centuries afterwards on the site of Greyfriars Kirk. By the final years of the 13th century, Edinburgh had grown in importance, but was still not the capital, though it had been made the seat of the sheriffdom of the Lothians more than a century before. When Edward I ('Longshanks') carried out his devastating invasion of Scotland in 1296 in response to the Scots signing the Auld Alliance treaty with France, the castle was an obvious target and just days after vanquishing the Scottish army at Dunbar, his forces marched on Edinburgh and besieged the burgh and castle for five days, using mighty siege engines and 'Greek fire' – a deadly incendiary substance – to break Scottish resistance. It was the first of 26 sieges, a European record for any castle. Longshanks became the first English monarch to capture Edinburgh Castle and he promptly stole one of Scotland's greatest treasures, the Black Rood of St Margaret, from either the castle or Holyrood. Supposedly a relic of the true cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, it was ranked alongside the crown of Scotland in importance and its capture was a devastating blow to Edinburgh and Scotland. It was taken south – Longshanks is said to have kept it in his own private chapel – but was repatriated in 1328 as a consequence of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton which recognised Scottish nationhood. The Rood was captured again by the English at the battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. It was then lost in Durham during the Reformation in the 16th century. Always one for documenting his misdeeds, The official English Court record stated that Edward took, 'Unum scrinium argenteum deauratum in quo reponitur crux que vocatur le blake rode', which translates as 'A silver-gilt casket in which lies the cross called the Black Rood'. The English also took other items of regalia and a huge cache of royal records which were never recovered. READ MORE: Becoming a royal burgh was a huge development in Glasgow's history As he did with several other castles, Edward installed a garrison in Edinburgh Castle. With an average garrison size of 300 soldiers, the English occupied the castle until 1313 when Robert the Bruce's great ally and general Sir Thomas Randolph captured the castle in a daring night raid. He led just 30 men up the cliffs and over the walls to take the castle from within. Today there is a plaque on the castle to record the deed. It states: 'To commemorate Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray. A distinguished soldier and diplomatist who recovered this castle in 1313 after it had been for 20 years in the hands of the English.' As I have shown previously, King Robert the Bruce always demolished recaptured castles in order to deny any future use to the English and Edinburgh Castle suffered the same fate. He did, however, make a huge contribution to Edinburgh – However, shortly before his death in 1329, he confirmed Edinburgh's status as a royal burgh and gave its leaders major trading advantages, including supervision of the port of Leith. The next English king to capture the castle was Longshanks's grandson, Edward III, who backed the attempted coup d'etat by Edward Balliol in 1334. Another English garrison was installed and Edward III paid for new castle walls, but that great warrior knight, Sir William Douglas of Liddesdale, recaptured it in 1341. The city's relationship with the garrison was shown by the fact that after Douglas disguised his men as merchants, they opened the castle to allow the Edinburgh citizenry inside, where they slaughtered the English, decapitating most of them and flinging their bodies over the walls. On his return after 11 years' imprisonment in England, King David II rebuilt the castle entirely, with David's Tower later being named after him. He died there in the royal apartments in 1371. He was succeeded by his uncle, Robert II, High Steward of Scotland and founder of the Stewart dynasty under which Edinburgh flourished and did become the capital. All this time the burghs of Edinburgh and Canongate were developing and North and South Leith also grew, with the former becoming an important port after the 1334 capture of Berwick by the English. Leith became famous for exporting wool and hides and importing Scotland's 'other national drink' of the period: claret wine from France. Edinburgh and almost all of Scotland suffered grievously when the Black Death arrived in 1349. Perhaps a third of the burgh's population died, and plague would recur on numerous occasions until the 17th century. In February 1356, the invasion of southern Scotland by Edward III of England saw much of Edinburgh razed to the ground in what became known as the Burnt Candlemas. A further invasion by the English under the teenage King Richard II in 1385 saw the town burned again. It would take many years for Edinburgh's population and economy to recover from both plague and fire, though the burgh expanded in area when the lands of Restalrig were bought from the Logan family. After the assassination of James I at Perth in 1437, the Stewart dynasty made Edinburgh Castle their principal fortress and residence. Just a year later the first meeting of the Estates of Parliament took place in the Old Tolbooth, administrative centre of the burgh. James II loved artillery and imported the giant cannon Mons Meg from the Continent – it stands in the castle to this day, despite having burst in 1681. Then James III formally decreed that Edinburgh was his capital, and during his reign the burgh's guilds, also known as crafts, began to form with the king giving them their famous banner, the Blue Blanket, in 1482. His successor James IV built Holyrood Palace as his main residence and also constructed the Great Hall at the castle that still stands much as it was. Edinburgh became a recognised European capital during his reign, which ended at Flodden Field in 1513. After that disaster, the people of Edinburgh hurriedly built the Flodden Wall in anticipation of an English invasion. READ MORE: Glasgow 850? It is one of the most ancient areas of Scotland In the meantime, the crafts and merchants were thriving – as were lawyers, the Court of Session being founded as the principal court of the land in 1532. In 1544, the forces of Henry VIII led by the Earl of Hertford burned down Holyrood Palace and Abbey and laid siege to the castle during the 'Rough Wooing' in which the English were trying to force a dynastic marriage on the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. She escaped to France, however, and married the Dauphin, the Crown Prince of France. While she was abroad, the Protestant Reformation took place. John Knox was appointed minister of St Giles in 1559, a major step towards the Reformation that was confirmed by the Scottish Parliament in 1560. After her first husband's death, Mary returned to Edinburgh in 1561 and the young Catholic queen frequently debated religious and political matters with Knox while living in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. After the murder of her secretary David Rizzio by nobles linked to her consort, Henry Darnley, the pregnant queen moved to the castle for safety Here she gave birth to her son James on June 19, 1566. Edinburgh was thus at the beginning of the Union, as James VI became James I of England in 1603, after which his royal court moved to London. While still in Edinburgh, James VI approved the town council's request to establish a university, Scotland's fourth, in 1582, and even after his move to London he still considered Edinburgh as his Scottish capital and had the palace restored for his sole visit home in 1617. Parliament House was constructed during the 1630s at a time when Edinburgh was truly prosperous, with the university leading the study of medicine which became a world-leading facet of Edinburgh. Merchants became responsible for the building of stone tenements on either side of the High Street, creating the Old Town we can still see today. Brewing, printing, and the manufacture of clothing goods were strengths of Edinburgh. The New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell occupied the town and castle following his invasion of Scotland in 1650, and again Holyrood Abbey and Palace were the objects of English ire. The Parliament barely survived Scottish anger over the Act of Union in 1701, and in common with other cities, the townspeople rioted in a vain bid to preserve Scotland's independence. After the astonishing victory of the Jacobites at Prestonpans in 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart based himself at Holyrood and 'cancelled' the Union. If only he had taken the advice to stay in Scotland and consolidate his rule here – but he didn't, a huge opportunity was missed, and the result was Culloden. Still to come was the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, even the sport of golf – it was in Edinburgh, not St Andrews, that its rules were first promulgated. That will be a story for a different time and different place, however, for today I am retiring from journalism for the foreseeable future, largely on health grounds as I will be undergoing heart surgery soon. It's the end of 10 years working for The National and Sunday National, and as Hamish MacPherson I have been given the fantastic privilege of telling the history of Scotland – a unique achievement by The National which no other Scottish newspaper can rival. If you've enjoyed my work and found it informative then I've been Martin Hannan, and if not then I've been the other fella… Saor Alba, farewell.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Light in the Piazza' coming to Blackfriars Theatre
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Take a trip to Italy this weekend for the musical 'The Light in the Piazza,' coming to Blackfriars Theatre. The story, based on the novella by Elizabeth Spencer, is described as two young lovers together in Italy, as a mother is forced to grapple with her daughter's devastating secret. The Blackfriars production stars Andrea McGaugh as Margaret, the mother, and Natalia Hulse as Clara, the daughter. Both were interviewed by News 8's Brennan Somers, which can be viewed in the video player above. The show will be held on Friday, May 30, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. You can purchase tickets by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
