Front Row BBC Radio 4

Rufus Wainwright, hairdressing film Medusa Deluxe and the rise of the understudy.

Charles Byrne was an 18th-century “Irish giant” whose skeleton was stolen and put on display against his wishes. 240 years after his death, he is being remembered in a new electro acoustic opera rather than as a museum-piece curiosity. Dawn Kemp of the Hunterian Museum discusses removing the famous skeleton from their collection, and composer, musician, and robotic artist Sarah Angliss tells us about her new opera, Giant, which celebrates Byrne on stage, and is opening the Aldeburgh Festival.

The Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel “Hamnet” is now playing on stage at the Globe Theatre and won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her latest “The Marriage Portrait” has made it onto the 2023 shortlist, and was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller. Both focus on the lives of women hidden in history behind men of influence. In the next of our series meeting the Women’s Prize finalists, we’ll be finding out what it is about these stories that inspire her, and how it feels to make the shortlist for a second time.

It is commonly accepted, including here at Front Row, that creativity is a good thing. But two new books: Samuel. W. Franklin’s The Cult of Creativity and Against Creativity by Oli Mould, challenge that view, arguing that creativity is a recent invention and that the artistic impulse has been co-opted by the capitalist military industrial complex. Both authors discuss their ideas with Tom Sutcliffe.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Julian May

Critics Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson join Front Row to review the exhibition Punk: Rage and Revolution at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery and Soft Touch Arts.

The American writer and director Tina Satter talks about her new film Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney. The script is based on the transcript of the FBI interrogation of the whistleblower Reality Winner, who leaked secret documents about Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

And Katie Puckrik and Michael Carlson also review a new TV drama series about Watergate starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, White House Plumbers.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Sarah Johnson

Writer/director Shane Meadows and actor Michael Socha on the new BBC TV adaptation of Benjamin Myers' novel, The Gallows Pole.

The Mercury Music Prize-nominated minimal jazz trio GoGo Penguin play tracks from their new album, Everything Is Going To Be OK, live in the studio – and discuss how they alter their instruments to extend their range of sound.

As the interests and concerns of the First Nations people rise up the cultural agenda in Australia exemplified by the plan for the National Aboriginal Art Gallery, Ce Benedict, based in Australia and a Senior Producer at ABC Radio National, reports on how that story is resonating in their homeland and in the UK.

Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Broadway legend Chita Rivera, who made her name playing Anita in the original stage production of West Side Story, talks to Samira Ahmed about the highlights of her seven decade career, ahead of the publication of her memoir.

Arts consultant Amanda Parker, formerly editor of Arts Professional magazine and now of the Forward Institute, and theatre director Tom Morris, who until recently ran Bristol Old Vic, discuss new approaches to funding the arts.

Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist: Priscilla Morris on her nominated debut novel Black Butterflies

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 from Jamaica. Front Row marks the artistic and cultural contribution of a generation of people from the Caribbean, now characterised as the Windrush Generation, who arrived then, soon before or in the years following. Samira talks to the Jamaican-born actor and director Anton Phillips about his career, including starring in the cult classic Space 1999 and directing James Baldwin's The Amen Corner in a landmark production on the London stage. Andrea Levy's highly acclaimed 2004 novel Small Island tells the story of four people caught up in the Caribbean migration story and has been adapted for radio, TV and stage. The playwright Patricia Cumper, poet and writer Hannah Lowe and novelist Louise Hare discuss the impact of the book on them and their own writing. The composer Shirley J Thompson OBE talks about how her Jamaican heritage shaped her music making and about composing for the Coronation. And Kevin LeGendre explains the impact of the arrival of calypso and steel pan on the musical life of the nation.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Sarah Johnson