Front Row Folgen

On today's Front Row, Samira Ahmed talks to stand-up comedian Al Murray about putting the puppets of the political satire TV show Spitting Image on stage for the first time, in a new production, Spitting Image - Idiots Assemble, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. And she discusses the Oscar and Bafta-nominated animation Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, and a new exhibition of work by the American visual artist, Alice Neel, which opens at the Barbican in London today, with arts critics Hanna Flint and Louisa Buck.Producer: Kirsty McQuire

The Oscar-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia tells Tom Sutcliffe about collaborating with the Olivier-winning choreographer Akram Khan on the dance film Creature. Originally conceived for English National Ballet on stage, Creature is inspired by Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck and Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein.Today Letty McHugh was announced as the winner of the Barbellion Book Prize, awarded annually to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and / or disability. Letty joins us live from Yorkshire, to give an insight into the creation of her Book of Hours: An Almanac for The Seasons of The Soul, a collection of lyric essays and poetry.In Manchester, two cultural institutions reopen their doors- Manchester Museum, now with the UK’s first permanent gallery celebrating the South Asian diaspora, and esea- short for East and South East Asia- contemporary, formerly the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art. Shahidha Bari speaks to Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum and Xiaowen Zhu, director of esea contemporary.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry ParkerImage: Jeffrey Cirio in Creature, an Asif Kapadia film, based on an original concept by Akram Khan (courtesy of BFI Distribution and English National Ballet)

Tracy Chevalier discusses a historic Vermeer exhibition at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the largest collection of his paintings ever assembled including Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was celebrated by Chevalier's 1999 novel of the same name.Bristol Old Vic is collaborating with four universities in the West Country for a major study into audience reactions in the theatre. Do reactions in the auditorium differ from those watching it online? Melanie Abbott investigates, talking to Iain Gilchrist from University of Bristol, Mike Richardson from University of Bath, Charlotte Geeves from Bristol Old Vic, actor Sophie Steer and Emma Keith, Director of Digital Media at the National Theatre. The finely wrought rhyming and metrical poetry of A. E. Stallings has won her prizes in the US, but until now she has not been published in the UK. Manchester-based publisher Carcanet is putting this right with This Afterlife, her Selected Poems. A. E. Stallings talks about living in Greece, drawing on classical mythology, making art out of the minutiae of life, and the joy of rhythm and rhyme.Jonathan Howard of The King's Singers tells us about the recent cancellation of a concert they were due to perform at Pensacola Christian College in Florida, over what the group says were "concerns related to the sexuality of members." Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Paul Waters(Photo: Photo Rijksmuseum)