Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

• Southern Daily Echo: All Star Line-Up Confirmed For Wickham Festival: Spike’s All Stars Band with a line-up which will include Queen drummer Roger Taylor, Marillion lead singer Fish, Madeleine Bell and solo artist/actress Toyah Willcox with a chance of other top names also making a guest appearance – Continue reading…

• Virgin Media: Shakespeare in pop: It’s 400 years since Shakespeare died! Yes, a rum anniversary (23 April 1616), but one which allows us to celebrate his input towards music culture… The Tempest: You would think with something like The Tempest, that the goths would be all over that, but no: only the Deftones and not-that-spooky-just-a-bit-darkish Pendulum have co-opted it for a title. One of Toyah’s pre-pop jobs was a role as Miranda in Derek Jarman’s interesting film version from 1979 – Continue reading…

• Vodzilla: Shakespeare 400: BFI brings the Bard’s films to VOD: With Saturday 23rd April marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the UK is going into overdrive celebrating the Bard, and the British Film Institute is no exception. This month, the BFI presents Shakespeare on Film, a UK-wide series of 300 special screenings and events celebrating the enormous impact the playwright’s life, work and legacy has had on cinema – Continue reading…

• Flickering Myth: Aaaaaaaah! Still: Toyah Willcox as Barbara – Continue reading…

• Lou Reviews: Shakespeare 400 in images: Heathcote Williams as Prospero and Toyah as Miranda in the 1979 film of ‘The Tempest’ – Continue reading…

A comprehensive article on yesterday’s Shakespeare 400 event has been published by The New Criterion.

Shakespeare 400 at the Victoria & Albert

The day ended on a warming note: a strong cup of tea, a ginger biscuit, and a genial chat between the poetry editor Paul Keegan and the singer/actress Toyah Willcox, who played Miranda in Derek Jarman’s film of The Tempest (1979). Willcox’s costume of rags is held by the V&A, and was too delicate to be released for this symposium. The film has aged similarly: part camp period piece, part inspired dismantling of the play. Jarman, Willcox recalled, started with “design.” He broke the final image of the play into its components, and then reconstructed them in his fashion. If he did not build a smoothly working machine, at least its coughs and rattles add to the chorus of interpretations and images.

While filming Jarman’s Tempest, the cast and crew chose to sit out a snow storm in their remote set, a derelict abbey. “It was fantastically wild,” Willcox recalled of working inside a real tempest. “We were living the dream.”

• Continue reading at The New Criterion.

• Shakespeare 400: Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with the stuff that dreams are made on. Hosted by the V&A and led by Shakespeare scholar John Pitcher (St John’s College, Oxford), we invite you to a festival of art, poetry, music and on-stage discussions devoted to his final, and most magical play, The Tempest – Continue reading…

• Penguin: A Guide To Shakespeare: The Tempest, directed by Derek Jarman (1979) – A wonderfully high camp, punk take on Shakespeare’s last play, Jarman’s adaptation stars the poet Heathcote Williams as Prospero and a young Toyah Willcox as Miranda. The music is extraordinary, perfectly encapsulating Caliban’s famous, ‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises / Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not’ and the film is a visual feast. Watch this if you like… epics, beautiful cinematography – Continue reading…

• My Favourite Things: British punk singer, Toyah Willcox as Miranda in Derek Jarman’s 1979 film version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest – Continue reading…

• Toyah At The V&A: Toyah is a panel guest at the forthcoming Shakespeare 400 at The V&A: A One Day Festival, taking place on 22nd April 2016. Further information/Book tickets at the V&A website. More details also at toyahwillcox.com.

Toyah has been confirmed as a panel guest at the forthcoming Shakespeare 400 at The V&A: A One Day Festival, taking place on 22nd April 2016.

‘O brave new world!’ – The Tempest

Celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with the stuff that dreams are made on. Hosted by the V&A and led by Shakespeare scholar John Pitcher (St John’s College, Oxford), we invite you to a festival of art, poetry, music and on-stage discussions devoted to his final, and most magical play, The Tempest. It will be a day, in the words of Caliban, of ‘sounds,’ ‘sweet airs’ and ‘a thousand twangling instruments’, as represented in the V&A’s collections.

Prospero’s art – the imaginative world of wizards, spells and demigods banned by the Elizabethan church but alive in people’s fears and fantasies – will be looked at alongside the physical realm of windmills, water power, and sailing ships. The poetry of the play, and the way it lives on stage and in film, will be discussed by poets Alice Oswald and Alicia Stallings, the novelist John Lanchester and the actress Harriet Walter. The many mental states The Tempest evokes and occupies – revery, stupor, frenzy, vengefulness, and wonder – will be explored and experienced by you, the participants.

• Further information/Book tickets at the V&A website. More details also at toyahwillcox.com.