Freelance magazine journalist specialising in arts & culture, equality issues, and popular science. During the last 20 years he has written for magazines including Able, Access, and PosAbility.
Posts by Paul F Cockburn
Edinburgh Festival Fringe – review roundup
August 19, 2019Veteran Fringe reviewer, Paul F Cockburn delivers a series of micro-reviews from Edinburgh Fringe, all of the work featuring disabled talent. Resurrecting Bobby Awl This telling of Richard Kirkwood’s story is a fractured call for identity and recognition. Robert Kirkwood was so physically disabled that his parents abandoned him, and the boy ...
Pick of the Fringe
August 2, 2019Disabled performers and artists are making their presence felt in Edinburgh this August, as Paul F Cockburn discovers. Hope springs eternal at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; regardless of the growing success of other festivals around the world, the Scottish capital in August is where creative careers are launched like nowhere else: ...
Artist Jo Bannon on why ‘We Are Fucked’
July 25, 2018We Are Fucked is a new performance work by artist Jo Bannon which explores desire, sexuality and neoliberalism. Its focus is on the modern feminist experience of personal, psychological and political penetration, as she tells Paul F Cockburn. It’s the obvious question to ask, and yet it is often the least respected: ...
Birds of Paradise Theatre Company: 25 and still flying!
July 6, 2018Glasgow-based, disability-led Birds of Paradise Theatre Company is celebrating its 25th birthday during 2018 but, as artistic director Robert Softley-Gale tells Paul F Cockburn, they are far from complacent about the future. It’s a notable achievement for any arts organisation – let alone a disability-led one – to celebrate its 25th ...
Solar Bear break new ground with a production of Caryl Churchill’s ‘Love and Information’
November 20, 2017A new touring production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information is an excellent showcase for a young cast from the UK's only performance degree for D/deaf actors at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in collaboration with leading Scottish company Solar Bear. Review by Paul F Cockburn. Caryl Churchill’s 2012 play Love ...
Access at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF)
September 23, 2017From the start, the organisers of the annual Scottish Queer International Film Festival were determined their event would be as fully accessible as possible, as Festival Coordinator Helen Wright explains to Paul F Cockburn. The not-for-profit Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) was launched in 2015 with the goal of “getting ...
Mind the Gap’s Mia, Daughters of Fortune: don’t drop the baby
August 14, 2017Informative but not necessarily engaging: Paul F Cockburn reviews Mind the Gap’s theatrical exploration of learning disabilities and parenthood, currently playing at Summerhall, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Around 2% of people in England have a learning disability. Around 7% of them are parents. Around two in five (40%) of those ...
Ramesh Meyyappan explores mental well-being and identity in his new show
May 17, 2017Ramesh Meyyappan is becoming more widely celebrated for his darkly comic brand of visual theatre. Paul F Cockburn caught his latest production Off-Kilter at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, as part of its Mayfesto 2017 season. Internationally-acclaimed performer Ramesh Meyyappan enjoyed sell-out performances around the world for his most recent show, Butterfly. ...
Jo Lewis: on her documentary of the first disability theatre production to play at the National
April 7, 2017In 2016 Graeae Theatre Company took their production of The Solid Life of Sugar Water to the National Theatre. Paul F Cockburn speaks with the filmmaker Jo Lewis who documented what happened. #sugarwater, a film documentary following Graeae’s arrival at the National Theatre, was a very personal project for the award-winning ...
Claire Cunningham on ‘The Way You Look (At Me) Tonight’
August 30, 2016How do we look at each other? How do we allow ourselves to be seen? How do our bodies shape the ways we perceive the world around us? These are some of the questions raised by a new work by acclaimed Scottish disabled artist Claire Cunningham, who will be performing ...
Why Cameron Morgan Loves Classic TV
April 8, 2016Paul F Cockburn speaks with artist Cameron Morgan about his Unlimited-funded exhibition of paintings, TV Classics – Part 1, part of this year’s Glasgow International. Television was a big part of Cameron Morgan’s life as a child but, growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was a very different ...
‘Purposeless Movements’ – Robert Softley Gale
February 19, 2016Birds of Paradise co-Artistic Director Robert Softley Gale talks with Paul F Cockburn about the company's new physical theatre work, Purposeless Movements. In 2012, the actor Robert Softley Gale first performed If These Spasms Could Speak, an acclaimed one-man show in which he performed a collection of amusing, sad, touching and ...
#SummitPortrayed: Tanya Raabe-Webber
January 25, 2016Tanya Raabe-Webber's new exhibition at Glasgow’s Project Ability is so much more than just some sketches of the participants at a recent conference, as Paul F Cockburn discovers. Every week of the year, Glasgow-based Project Ability works with hundreds of disabled people, and people with mental health issues, through a busy ...
flip Artists: The View From Here
August 29, 2015A recent exhibition in Edinburgh’s Gayfield Creative Spaces presented work by nine disabled artists who have recently completed a nine-month programme of mentoring and support from several high profile arts organisations in Scotland. Paul F Cockburn spoke with Robert Softley Gale, director of flip: Disability Equality in the Arts, who ...
Edinburgh Festival: Graeae: ‘The Solid Life of Sugar Water’
August 15, 2015Graeae Theatre Company presents an often harrowing tale of a disintegrating relationship in its first major production as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Reviewed by Paul F Cockburn. The Solid Life of Sugar Water, Jack Thorne’s new play for Graeae Theatre Company and Theatre Royal Plymouth, starts out almost like ...
Accessible Edinburgh Fringe?
July 6, 2015Every August the world’s performers and entertainers flock to Scotland’s capital. Paul F Cockburn asks just how easy is it for disabled artists and audiences to get the most out of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe? Given that it’s been running every year for nigh-on seven decades, it’s hardly surprising that the ...
Birds of Paradise Theatre Company present ‘Crazy Jane’
June 18, 2015Birds of Paradise Theatre's latest production Crazy Jane tells the story of Jane Avril, star of the Moulin Rouge, who was immortalised in the iconic posters of Toulouse-Lautrec. Written by Nicola McCartney and directed by Garry Robson the show has recently toured Scotland. Review by Paul F. Cockburn At first glance, ...
Claire Cunningham: ‘Give Me A Reason To Live’
May 8, 2015Claire Cunningham’s latest work is stripped of theatrical props, but certainly not impact. Review of a performance at The Tramway, Glasgow by Paul F Cockburn. Unlike Claire Cunningham’s delicate, on occasions audience-interactive, Guide Gods – in which she worked with numerous tea cups, saucers and a hostess trolley within a specifically ...
Graeae Theatre tackle a new adaptation of ‘Blood Wedding’
February 16, 2015Graeae’s Artistic Director Jenny Sealey talks to Paul F Cockburn about her company’s new co-production with Dundee Rep Ensemble and Derby Theatre, setting Lorca's classic Spanish Play in the city. Blood Wedding is an acclaimed tragedy by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. First performed in 1933, it focuses on the ...
Lea Cummings: ‘Infinite Psychic Love Explosion’
February 12, 2015Glasgow-based artist and musician Lea Cummings’ first solo exhibition is bright, vibrant, but somewhat vacuous – which may well be the point, says Paul F Cockburn. Given the rumbustious, often destructive (and usually site-specific) nature of much of ‘transcendental noise artist’ Lea Cumming's work, it’s hardly surprising that he has not ...
Unlimited 2014: Garry Robson on Edmund the Learned Pig
July 25, 2014As part of the second Unlimited programme, more audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy the glorious musical adventure featuring an unusual pig. Paul F Cockburn speaks with co-creator Garry Robson. Edmund the Learned Pig brings together a disparate group of contributors. How did the show come together? “I’ve always been a ...
