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YouTube video by Cathy Hume The Making of the Life of Job

Here are 2 films by Camilla Adams from my 'Life of Job' medieval play project that might interest academics/ theatre & heritage people. 1) straight recording youtu.be/wYo4JwsOuP4 and 2) a 'making of': how we staged it at a feast at Winterbourne Barn. youtu.be/IK3My_DqvE8. Please share! #medievalsky

America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil.

It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States.

Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.

I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Today’s Extra Credit focuses on Benjamin Blyth’s article, “Shakespeare’s “Dramatic Style” at the Curtain: A Collaborative Model for Site-Responsive Practice-as-Research”. Check out these open-access resources to go along with this open-access article!

📰: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Are you looking for affordable rehearsal space in York? Do you love a discounted cafe and bar? Would you like access to theatre courses and masterclasses at a lower price? If yes, then become a MAKE member at Riding Lights Theatre Company today - only £5 per month! MAKE link in bio to sign up.

Time was you had to make your homunculus with fermented horse urine, but plus ça change...

This is one of my favorite paintings, from any painter, ever.

Not only is she crushing Mein Kampf, but the arc of her rivet gun's cable also evokes a serpent being crushed under her heel - even while the rivet gun herself is laid on her apron like Christ on the lap of the Virgin Mary.

To add to that, the only English play that *does* have the Cherry Tree sequence (N-Town) also emphatically has Joseph realise the situation long before (in the Joseph's Trouble section, and then the scene where Joseph and Mary are put on trial by their neighbours).

Attention creative medievalists! Eleanor Barraclough & I are co-editing a special issue of Public Humanities entitled CREATING THE MEDIEVAL NOW! See the cfp for details: essays of 2,000-3,000 words due 1 May 2026. (Amazing artwork by @hellomizk.bsky.social). 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Donate to the Cerne Abbas Nature Appeal Donate to the Cerne Abbas Appeal so together, we can help restore the land, habitats and species that live there.

Please do chip into the National Trust’s crowdfunder to help manage the land around the Cerne Giant for chalk wildflowers and butterfly species like Duke of Burgundy here: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/support-us/a...

Good news!

Earlier this year I shared reports that the land around the Cerne Abbas Giant was up for sale

I’m delighted that, after lots of conversations, the land has now been bought by the National Trust (who already own the Giant): www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

bsky.app/profile/guys...

I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.

This orangutan can't be beaten at climbing up a tree. Imagine its skill and poise as our next secretary of education.

The front covers of ‘Do It Yourself: Making Political Theatre’ written by my good friends Common/Wealth and my edited volume ‘Being Black and British: Before, During and After Drama School’.

These two make great friends.
Released a day apart, they’re almost twins.
Maybe putting both on reading lists and in libraries might be a good thing to do.
Maybe.

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

R.I.P. Harrison's translation of the Mysteries remains potent, a reminder of the deep poetic voice of Northern England even now.

Humanities Who needs history? Literature? Languages? Art? Philosophy? These can only help you to better understand our humanity. Best to let machines read your books. And write your books. Do your art for you. You will never need to think. Never need to learn. You’ll learn to like it. And when the end comes you’ll have never burdened down your soul with any growth. Someone selling this sees profit in destroying your humanity. -- John Wyatt Greenlee

A poem from this morning.

A very good interview on the reading crisis in the UK. Heartily endorse bringing back sure start or some version of it.

golf is a very strange game because basically you're taking a huge amount of land and making it a weirdass obstacle course for a tiny ball. imagine holding a golf ball up to see the ~200 acres you have reshaped and whispering to it "this is for you. this is all for you"

Eve admires ladybird headpiece

Lucifer tries on a crown, admired by other rebel angels

Lucifer in green scarf watches Adam having a dance

God and Noah present a finished paper boat

The Mystery Plays are well underway in Toronto! Some beautiful moments and expressions... #yorkplays2025

Wander by to check out what’s going on. Stay for one short play or stay for all 18 hours! Come and go as you please.

York Plays 2025 Step Into Medieval York: A Spectacular Day of Family-Friendly Theatre!

Check out the listing for full details on the. #free #familyfriendly event!

yorkplays2025.eventbrite.ca

We roll at dawn! The day has finally come. It’s been 27 years since we mounted the full York Corpus Christi plays in 1998. We lost our original wagons to fire but we have shiny new ones built using new research. #yorkplays2025 #torontoevents #medieval #medievaldrama

Painted green dragon on red pageant wagon

White York rose on yellow pageant wagon

Yellow pageant waggon with blue sheets and furniture on top

Excitement building in Toronto... #yorkplays2025

🚨 The wait is almost over! 🚨
🎭 June 7 (June 8 if it rains): the full York Cycle is back for the 1st time in 27 years!
🌅 From sunrise "Creation" to midnight "Last Judgment"
🎟️FREE & open to all!
👟 Come for an hour or the whole epic!
🔗 yorkplays.ca
#YorkPlays2025 #FreeEventsTO #MustSeeTO

Is it the Offspring's Americana?

WE WON!

The Supreme Court has upheld the right to wild camp on Dartmoor. This is a huge win for access to nature.

But we're just getting started.

It was never just about Dartmoor.

We’re fighting to extend the right to roam, swim, and sleep under the stars - across all of England.

Title: SOME GRAMMATICAL VOICES FOR USE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING ACTIVE VOICE e.g. Our team collected samples and then we tested them. CLICKBAIT VOICE e.g. We collected some samples... You won't believe what happened next! PASSIVE VOICE e.g. Samples were collected and tested. HAIKU VOICE e.g. Quiet science lab. Workers arrive with samples. The testing begins. PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE VOICE e.g. We did all the collecting and testing. No need to thank us. Just doing our job. CONSPIRACY VOICE e.g. Mysterious "Samples" were harvested and covertly "tested" by so-called scientists.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon