Episode 5 The Arts Show

Hello welcome to The Arts Show. It is our last show of 2012. We're in

a festive mood. James Nesbitt talks about his extremely successful

stage and screen career and his role in Peter Jackson's cinematic

epic, released today, The Hobbit. Northern Irish artist Debarah Brown,

a leading figure in the art world since the 60s is a major at the

retro sceptic at the F.E McWilliam Gallery. She talks to the art show.

There's festive music from the teenager everyone is talking about

- Londonderry's singing sensation - Soak. Pantomime theatre has been

described as the Marmite of the stage - loved by the public,

loathed by critics. The season is once again in full swing, so no

better time than to seek a fresh perspective. Theatre historian Mark

Phelan is a supporter of what he argues is a major mainstay of the

theatrical calendar. Hello, boys It has been seen as crude and

commercial. Alfred Tennyson described pantomime as "brainless."

George Bernard Shaw found it vulgar. I couldn't disagree more, nor could

the punters. Financially speaking, pantomime is no laughing matter.

Its popularity means its worth �23 million a year in the UK a year.

Without it, many children would not experience the pleasures of live

theatre and many theatres themselves could go dark,

permanently. They are on the streets..: The cast of Cinderella

is performing for over 80 performances in the coming weeks.

We are the glamour in town! The fact it is eight weeks of our

programme it needs to be financially successful. It brings

80,000 people to see it alone. That is 20% of our income and 20% of our

audience. That is why it is so important to us. It is a great big

driver in sales. We have just sold our �1 million worth of ticks this

year. It is big business. -- tickets this year. It is not a

musical. It is not a play. It is comedy. It is fun. Everyone is

having a great night out. You are a radiator... Not that - you are

radiating. You radiate, nap pi rash... Happyness. Oh, Cinderella,

everyone I see you I get tied- tongue. I think you mean tongue-

tide. It is as traditional asure ki. -- as Turkey. Pantomime has been

around for centuries, from Greece to England. The long revolution has

led us to a family show, where men in drag play dames in a musical

tradition. From Shakespeare to the Roman stage.

Where the principal boy is played by a pretty girl and men ogle the

shapely legs and tight-fitting trousers, which shows the success

of panto. It works on different What is going on here? It sounded

like you were all having fun. at the Waterfront Hall, 25,000

parents and children will see Sleeping Beauty. Theatre director,

Lisa May, is tackling the challenges of this genre for the

first time. We're going to go from page 17... I think the exciting

thing about panto is finding that balance between the madness and the

chaos that is integral to make it work. It is quick and I know it is

a bit tricky... It is getting that balance. It is the actors

constantly thinking on their feet. There's also where the audience

become part of the cast. There's nothing like it for live theatre.

It's a great experience! It is an echo of the tumultuous

conditions of the 19th century playhouse, when the audience

interrupted the actors on stage, hurling abuse and worse. Oh, yes I

will... Oh, no you won. It got so bad that actors sometimes performed

behind a net to protect them from The pleasure from pantomime was far

beyond the special licence it grants us to misbehave in the

theatre. Much of the rich pleasure comes from the form. It is as fixed

a tradition as the festive season itself. So, here is to wicked

villains, panto dames and principal boys, all in that riot of colour

and clamour that comes but once a year!

James Nesbitt has had an amazingly successful career, which has seen

him work with Paul Greengrass, Michael Winterbottom and Oliver

Hirschbiegel. He is constantly challenged himself by having

complex and diverse roles from Adam in Cold Feet to Bloody Sunday. An

undercover cop in Murphy's Law. Audiences can see him in cinemas

today as Bofur the Dwarf in Peter Allow me to inintroduce deuce you...

What has it been like as an experience? You are playing a dwarf.

One of the dwarfs. I'm Bofur, who is kind of - I am delighted to say

is Northern Irish. It is incredible. Nothing could prepare you for it.

You asked me to find the 14th member. I have chosen Mr Baggins.

got to work with an incredible cast. Ian, at 73 just was the best

education I could have had at an important time for me. Just to see

him so dedicated to his craft and he was a real inspiration. Many of

them like that, Kate Blanchet. do you make of yourself being a

Lego person? I was never really into Lego. I love the idea of this

being lodged up to noses of kids all over the world. His father was

principal of a primary school. It is the hard-working rural heartland

of Northern Ireland but has a strong tradition of amateur theatre.

James was on stage from the age of # Come on babe

# Why don't we paint the town # And all that jazz #

I see this gorgeous young boy, 15, 16 years of age, you can see that

James Nesbitt sparkle in his eyes. You can see him loving the camera

and the camera loving him back. don't know. It is not a bad song we

were singing. We were learning a craft there. We were learning

different skills, acquiring skills. That is really, I have tried to

hold on to that, but you are learning stuff.

James started a degree in French, but gave this up to study acting in

London. His first small role came within weeks of graduating. It took

more than ten years until he achieved household name status in

Cold Feet. This was a major one when I was 16. It was so

fascinating to watch you playing somebody from Northern Ireland, who

had no political baggage. That was my point. I was getting tired

myself of the Northern Irish accent and the Northern Irish person. It

was only connected to conflict. The families didn't approve. It was a

Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. Forbidden love. You cannot fight

that. Because you were Protestant and she was Catholic. No, she was

my geography teacher. It was written for an English person. I

said I have to play this as an Northern Irish person. Did that

define you then? I think so. I think so. But you know, that's

why, in a way, I went on to different things.

With the momentum of Cold Feet behind him, James was able to pick

a role that was very different - Protestant civil rights leader Ivan

Cooper in Bloody Sunday. A typical question - did that make

you feel better able to take on the part because he was Protestant?

I just remember, thinking, I've got to do this. I was scared of people

from my background feeling I was in some way betraying them. I was also

some way betraying them. I was also very scared that national ists in

Derry and the families would not -- nationalists in Derry would not

appreciate it. When we were filming, I was so immersed in it. Paul was

talking in my ear constantly and giving me incredible back-up, but

being firm with me. I lost any fears about what people's reactions

would be. It was a game-changing performance,

underpinned by an important aspect of James's work - research with

real people N this case, the real Ivan Cooper. He had not done the

march since the day. We did it. We went around, just the two of us. It

was brilliant. It was an incredible help to me. It was very helpful of

him. He presented me with just the most enormous amount of literature.

I had to read everything, all the literature from the past. I had to

literature from the past. I had to be completely immersed in it.

D five minutes ago I was at the bar. Him here, no way back in. Murphy's

Law had been fuelled by James's success in Cold Feet.

But, by series three, he insisted on changes to his character. You

showed a man capable of extreme violence. That was a shocking thing

for people who thought they knew you and the roles you had

previously embraced. Was it a liberation? That's a good question.

Did I consciously want to beat someone up on camera? Probably not

I went hand in hand with the part. Yes, it felt like - you are right -

It felt - of course this is what I do. I am an actor. I am supposed to

do something different here. Minutes of Heaven won a string of

awards and saw him appear alongside Liam Neeson. It is a fiction, but

one inspired by real events. It imagines an encounter between

Gabrielle Giffords and the UVF man who killed his brother. For James

meeting -- Mr Griffins and the UVF man who killed his brother.

don't we take a few moments ago. have been up and down the stairs. I

will meet him. I want to meet him. I taped him for five hours. I would

speak to him a lot. What are you looking at then? You are not going

to do an imitation of him. What he's thinking when he is quiet?

Then he's off again. You know? He did that a lot. Also just, you are

looking at a lot of the pain in his It's not your typical Hollywood

fight scene. It is messy and awkward... Liam Neeson said it

should be messy, I have lent, hard to watch. That's his Fve Minutes of

Heaven. He doesn't even get that. It feels to me that you've had a

very long journey in becoming an actor. 25 years of being an

overnight success. Why were you never satisfied with one particular

part? Because it is my job. That does hark back to, you know, my

work ethic. Right from the moment I get a script, or from the moment of

an idea, I am consumed with, you know the construction of a part,

the construction of that character's identity, his

background, how they move, how they sound, the way they listen. It is

absolutely what I hope will define me and continue to define me.

there ever a sense that because you did not follow your dad down the

road of education and become that French teacher there has been a

guilt over the years? That is probably very true, because the

notion of anything of money and fame and all that comes with that,

I think there's certainly been a lot of guilt. I probably spent 25

years of... Playing Bofur the Dwarf in The Hobbit has only been the

latest sharp corner turn James has made. Part of a relentless series

of challenges he's taken on. wrote for travel mags... They are

doing the work. And loving what they do. The Way took James to a

Hollywood audience. He brought something of county Antrim. You are

walking along with the stick. You swing that stick quite well. As I

say, I grew up and there was not much else to do. They thought, hey

a marching band. They were like, "I love that!" I am blessed with what

I do. I hope it continues. That seems a fitting end. Thank you very

And you can see James Nesbitt's full interview in an art show in

conversation special on 28th February.

Now, sculptor and artist Debarah Brown is counted among Northern

Ireland's leading art figures. Trained in Dublin as a painter she

returned to Belfast for most of her career, where her work evolved into

three-dimensional form. Famous for exploring glass fibre, she has

achieved extensive international fame. Now in her 80s and creating,

she is the subject of a majorette introduce speckive which has just

opened at the F.E McWilliam Gallery. The art show met up with her.

I'm constantly looking for forms and shapes and lines.

Almost like a composure, striking notes on the piano.

Put some shapes down and then work from that, make a whole piece. Form

is not there - to my mind it will not be interesting. You want to

recreate the thing into sculptural terms. Form is not there just to be

a copy, but there's still the problem of becoming a work of art

or not. I like that because I think the

more you struggle with it, the D I started as a painter and

trained as a painter. Gradually eI started to build up from the

surface and build up with paper match they. -- papier mache. It was

not permanent - you could not put it outside easily. I decided to

cast one or two bits in bronze. Once you cast in bronze, it's very

hard to go back to any other medium, because it's a nice, very nice

result. At least you hope it's nice. The way it reflects light - you can

buff it up, tone it down. I just like doing big things. They give

you scope to sort of let light hit them and get different sort of

tones into bronze and so on. It was the image of those sheep

coming along the road and the man taller than they were - making him

upright and that shape coming towards me.

It does not do to put it on too thick at first. I've always loved

animals. I used to go and help the farmer. I

used to feed the pigs. I liked the pigs. They are nice animals. They

are very friendly and nice. Even when I was a painter I always had

to paint what I knew - the landscape I knew. It's just the

same with sculpture. There's no use in doing that with something you

don't know. I'm 85-year-old now. I suppose I

have - should have - some experience behind me.

I've learnt from the faults and successes I've had over the years.

I think the exhibition in Banbridge will probably be my last one-man

show. I can't see myself doing another one. You say that sort of

thing and then you do it. I don't suppose I'll ever give up

until physically I have to give up. It's just something you love to do

and there it is, you know - I have to make it.

I haven't decided yet what the next thing will be, but there will be

something. Of course the pig isn't finished yet.

What an amazing lady and that exhibition runs until 2nd March at

the F.E McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge. Now, with his tips on

what's not to miss in the music world over the holiday season

here's Ralph. This is the story of the

Proclaimers, released in 1997. They continue to play with Celtic

passion. Trust me, you have not lived until you have had a sing-

along with the band. It is quite an experience. You can sample it for

yoursz at the Limelight in Belfast on Saturday night. Saturday sees

the return of Mumford and Sons to these shores.

2012 has been a great day for them. If you have not been lucky enough

to get a ticket, well I am afraid, you are out of luck. It is sold out

if you are going down to the gig, get there early for a great

seasonal treat. If you wonder why I am always going

on about what amazing young musicalal lapbt we have in this

country, -- musical al lapbt we have in this country, it is because

it is true. Fresh, poppy and with more shiny

hooks than at a fisherman's convention this is one gig not to

miss. As former front-man of the Frames

and one half of the Oscar-winning - Glenn has han an amaze career. Do

yourself a favour and go and see him on Sunday night.

Ricky Warwick has been in the revived Thin Lizzie. Now that

project has been put to bed, he's out on the solo road. I have seen

him sing a few times. His voice pins you to the back wall n the

nicest possible way. Finally, looking ahead into the New

Year, there's a chance to celebrate Derry's City of Culture status -

they will kick-start an incredible year, with a gig on the 11st

January. Go along and support local musical if you can. Thank you. That

is almost it for tonight. The art show will be back on 24th January,

when we will be in Derry, Londonderry, as it begins its

inaugural Year of the City of Culture. You can keep up-to-date on

BBC Radio Ulster Arts Extra. We leave with some music. At 16 Soak

is the name on everyone's lips. Having first picked up a guitar

only a few years ago, she has released two EPs Trains and Sea

Creatures, which have attracted huge industry attention and Radio

One air-play. She plays support to Snow Patrol in the Waterfront Hall

and will play on 20th January. Joined my her father and younger

brother, she gives the art show an exclusive, festive performance.

# We're walking in the air # We're floating in the moon-lit

# The people far below # I'm holding very tight

# I'm riding in the midnight moon # I'm finding I can fly

# So high # The villages go by

# The rivers and the hills # The forests and the streams

# Children gaze open-mouthed # Taken by surprise

# Nobody down below # Believes their eyes

# We're surfing in the air # We're swimming in the frozen sky

# We're drifting over ice and mountains floating by

# Suddenly swooping low # On an ocean deep