Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti: A Working Diary

Description

"An exhilarating, fascinating and eye-opening journey with two of our most inspirational creatives. A must-read for anyone interested in the crafts of acting and writing or considering a career as a self-employed artist. Lolita and Adrian don't shy away from documenting the reality of our profession - the endless multi-tasking, the long unpaid hours, and the peaks and troughs of generating your own work and being a creative-for-hire. Equally though they celebrate the joy and satisfaction when all that sweat and risk finally pays off." Meera Syal CBE In this insightful joint working diary, the creative powerhouse of a couple, Lolita Chakrabarti and Adrian Lester, chronicle 16 months of their fascinating working lives, including their experiences working on the stage adaptation of Life of Pi, an original series of monologues about the NHS, the film adaptation of Red Velvet and the TV series The Rook, among many other projects. As readers, we experience, first-hand, their experiences as two of the most proactive and versatile theatre makers today, working across a range of media and exciting collaborations.

Winner of the 2012 Most Promising Playwright Evening Standard award, Lolita Chakrabarti is a British actress and writer who has worked extensively on stage and screen. Her acting theatre credits include The Great Game, Afghanistan for the Tricycle, Last Seen - Joy for the Almeida, Free Outgoing for the Royal Court, John Gabriel Borkman for the Donmar Warehouse and Fanny and Alexander for the Old Vic. Her acting screen credits include The Casual Vacancy, Jekyll and Hyde, My Mad Fat Diary season 3, Vera, Outnumbered, Hustle, Extras Christmas Special, Holby City, Silent Witness, Amnesia, William and Mary, Fortysomething, Bodies, and Forgiven. In 2012, Red Velvet, Chakrabarti's debut play, was the first play performed under the Tricycle's new artistic director Indhu Rubasingham. It returned to the Tricycle in 2014 before having its US premiere at St Ann's Warehouse New York. Adrian Lester OBE is one of the most feted actors of today, having appeared in key roles at the National Theatre and in the West End. For his theatre work, he has won the Ian Charleson Award, a Time Out Award and the Best Actor award in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. On television, he has appeared in Hustle, Girlfriends, The Ghost Squad, Bonekickers and Merlin, and his films include Primary Colors, Love's Labour's Lost, The Day After Tomorrow and Spider-Man 3. In 2013, he was awarded an OBE for services for drama.

This fascinating dual diary ... works on a number of levels. It is a breathless chronicle of a year in the mature careers of Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti. Thanks to refreshing candour, prospective actors, writers and directors can find out what they might be letting themselves in for. It can also by default be seen as a helpful manual that will prove fascinating to anyone wishing to hone their skills in a number of creative disciplines by reading how experts operate or learn how to juggle impossible numbers of projects without having a nervous breakdown. * British Theatre Guide * An exhilarating, fascinating and eye-opening journey with two of our most inspirational creatives. A must-read for anyone interested in the crafts of acting and writing or considering a career as a self-employed artist. Lolita and Adrian don't shy away from documenting the reality of our profession - the endless multi-tasking, the long unpaid hours, and the peaks and troughs of generating your own work and being a creative-for-hire. Equally though they celebrate the joy and satisfaction when all that sweat and risk finally pays off. * Meera Syal CBE *