'Be yourself and keep relaxed in your audition'

Explosive moment in Shakespearean drama as lead actor is shot with an imitation firearm

With his genetic inheritance – his father was one of the stage greats of his era, Sir Michael Redgrave, and his mother, Rachel Kempson, was a distinguished actress – it was hardly surprising that Corin Redgrave, like his sisters Vanessa and Lynn, should choose a career in the theatre. After an early period of promise which included some performances for the Royal Shakespeare Company marking him out as a significant talent, his involvement with radical politics (often in alliance with his elder sister Vanessa) took him away from the theatre for two decades. His return in the 1990s was an extraordinary comeback, seeing him ceaselessly active as director (opening a new theatre venture, the Garrick at Lichfield, in 2003), theatrical campaigner (lobbying against the proposed demolition of the Arts Theatre in London), writer and actor on stage and screen. Intriguingly, some of his later stage successes were in roles associated with his father, including Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version, Frank Elgin in The Country Girl and King Lear for the RSC.

He has dominated British theatre for more than half a century and talks fondly of Samuel and Harold, but the founder of the RSC still maintains he is just lucky. Andrew Johnson meets Sir Peter Hall

After describing his career as a filmmaker as a 15-year "distraction", Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire, is set to return to his original role as a theatre director with a "spectacular" production of Frankenstein that he first conceived almost a decade ago.

RSC cloaked in borrowed robes

Yo La Tengo have a certain way with a song. It can be trundling along nicely but not necessarily grabbing you, when a sound emerges that makes your ears prick up and suddenly all the divergent parts of the music come alive and the song becomes great. In their opening track, "My Heart's Reflection", it's James McNew's rumbling bass; in their second, "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven", it's Ira Kaplan's guitar solo followed by McNew's sweetly pitched backing vocal, that bring their songs into sharp, brilliant focus.

Actor retires hurt from Royal Shakespeare Company drama after stage fight gets out of hand

The Cinematic Orchestra defy classification. Is it jazz? Electronica? Hip-hop or trip-hop? Or movie soundtrack music? What is obvious, though, is that the shape-shifting outfit formed by John Swinscoe in the late 1990s does not lack musical conviction. Which other band could perform an hour-long instrumental accompaniment to an 80-year-old silent Soviet movie and be confident of a capacity crowd?

Doves released their fourth album, Kingdom of Rust, earlier this year, and it has been widely hailed their best yet. Its bittersweet lyrics and sweeping melodies, delivered in epic rock songs, are not far from their first album, Lost Souls, that won them a loyal fan base in 2000. That's not to say their music hasn't developed – it just hasn't flirted with fads.

The director of the RSC believes that the Bard's influence reaches beyond the stage

Krautrocker can still roll with it

The danger in relocating The Tempest to South Africa is that real-life events move more quickly than any drama, says Paul Vallely

The African Soul Rebels tour has become a fixture in the music calendar. Since Music Beyond Mainstream began curating the shows in 2005 – mixing breaking acts (Tinariwen and Amadou & Mariam) with established stars (Salif Keita, Rachid Taha) from across Africa in a three-for-one price-buster. And as the tour wends its way to The Roundhouse and a full house, this year's rebels proved one of its strongest line-ups.