BridgeToTheStars.net

The Journal reports on a talk Philip Pullman gave in Newcastle last night, the inaugural Fickling Lecture on developments in children's literature. “It was an intellectual tour de force”, says the paper, “but many in the audience were probably most interested to hear that Lyra, the heroine of His Dark Materials, will be back.” Presumably Pullman was refering to the upcoming Book of Dust: the upcoming companion piece to His Dark Materials, which is believed will carry on the story started in Lyra's Oxford, along with other short stories. Read more.

In Spring 2006, Playbox Theatre Company will stage Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

Artistic Director, Stewart McGill says, “We loved Nicholas Hytner’s epic staging at the NT, yet we feel what we want to do is rekindle the imagination with our production, so the show will use movement, aerial artistry, and some of the finest young actors aged 14-25 to grace the stage. Our designer Kate Unwin is immersing herself in the trilogy and we hope our work will be a beautiful alternative to the previous production. It will be an active partnership between creators, actors, material and audience making the worlds of the books in an entirely new, non-pictorial way. We welcome fans of the novels and hope that groups and individuals will spend time here for both parts. Dates are being finalised right now and booking will open in November. As a passionate devotee of the books I can’t wait to start rehearsals with the creative team and the performers. I think our approach may be a little darker than the National’s, a journey of souls… a rather special event for us all”.

The team so far includes:

Directors Stewart McGill, Mary King & Emily Quash
Design, Kate Unwin
Technical Director, Ian Roberts

Philip Pullman has posted his Septemeber newsletter on his website. This month, spurred by his presence at a conference sponsored by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, he discusses global warming at great length. “I`m talking about the changes in the climate that we`ve been seeing more and more of in recent years – the huge loss of the Arctic sea ice, the retreating glaciers, the threatened Antarctic ice shelf, the increasing temperatures of the sea, the loss of coral reefs, and so on, and so on. [...] The great entrepreneurs who set the Industrial Revolution going couldn`t have known, when they invented their steam engines and burnt vast amounts of coal, what the results would be two hundred years later.” Read more.

Pullman wrote a piece for today's Guardian on a number of issues that are in need of a champion. Read the article.

Comingsoon.net has some more words from director Anand Tucker on the forthcoming film adaptation of the first His Dark Materials book. “I'm thinking that it's just a movie about a little girl who's looking for a family, so it's still just all about emotions. It doesn't matter how big or small it is, you still have to turn up with a camera and some actors and try to make it convincing for an audience.” Read more.

The Playbox Theatre Company at the Dream Factory in Warwick, a company that prepares young people in the performing arts, will be adapting and staging Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy in 2006, according to an article in The Stage. More info coming soon.

An article in The Telegraph today features Pullman again talking about the state of British education, and speaking unusually favourably about The Bible and hymn-singing… Read more.