Thikra: Night of Remembering is Akram Khan Company’s last touring show. Here, the choreographer and dancer’s collaborators recall how he motivated them

Nitin Sawhney , composer, collaborated on multiple projects with Khan, including Kaash (2002), Zero Degrees (2005) and Vertical Road (2010)

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The Frattini Bivouac is part of a Bergamo gallery’s experiment to ‘think like a mountain’. But in the thin air of the Italian alps, curatorial ideas are challenged in more ways than one

At 2,300 metres above sea level, Italy’s newest – and most remote – cultural outpost is visible long before it becomes reachable. A red shard on a ridge, it looks first like a warning sign, and then something more comforting: a shelter pitched into the wind.

The structure stands on a high ridge in the municipality of Valbondione, along the Alta Via delle Orobie, exposed to avalanches and sudden weather shifts. I saw it from above, after taking off from the Rifugio Fratelli Longo, near the village of Carona – a small mountain municipality a little over an hour’s drive from GAMeC, Bergamo’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – the closest access point I was given for the site visit.

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A student navigates troubled relationships at age 19 and 25, as he comes to terms with mental health difficulties

“The best way to make sense of life,” Derek Owusu believes, “is to write about it.” His semi-autobiographical debut, That Reminds Me , was an attempt to understand how he came to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder: a condition marked, among other things, by intense emotions, self-destructive impulses, fear of abandonment, black-and-white thinking, and an unstable sense of self. The novel, written in an elliptical and densely poetic style, offered an illuminating, if harrowing, account of alienation, addiction and self-harm, through the story of K, an alter ego whose early childhood, like Owusu’s, was spent in foster care. It won Owusu the Desmond Elliott prize in 2020, and announced him as an idiosyncratic talent; in 2023, he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Owusu now turns again to the subject of BPD, this time exploring the complexities and contradictions of living with the condition. His narrator, Marcus, is 25 when the book opens. An English literature student of Ghanaian heritage, he is at a speed dating event when he meets San. San is strikingly beautiful, and she grabs his attention right away: “So, yes, I was in love again, losing balance, stumbling towards an earlier phase of my life.”

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Williamson stars in a debut feature that feels more like an elongated music video than a fully realised drama, but it’s redeemed by some hilarious moments and strident imagery

Produced by Portishead co-founder Geoff Barrow, this scabrous if undernourished debut feature turns a sceptical eye on 90s rave culture. Venal pillhead David (Marc Bessant) first robs an unconscious dealer, then in another flashback tries to burgle his own parents. Before you can say “post-Brexit revisionism”, he’s upside down in the wreckage of his car in a forest – and subject to the wrathful eye of the Poacher (Sleaford Mods frontman Jason Williamson). Refusing to extricate David, with no time for townies, he is broken Britain personified: “You’re one of those noisy cunts from up on the heath.”

Game gets off to a shaky start, spending too long on pedantically chronicling David’s attempt to free himself from his seatbelt, while clumsily segueing into flashbacks of his normal activities. The bigger point – that the ecstasy generation were primarily out for number one – is firmly made. But these vignettes are too thin to properly prime us for what to expect when the Poacher turns up, fuming after David strangles his dog. Still, a darkly funny duel takes hold – David desperate to escape; the Poacher withholding his jerrycan of scrumpy, intent on dousing him instead in embittered discourse. Williamson, exuding ponderous menace in the role, is reminiscent of Michael Smiley.

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This madcap variety show sees its titular lead direct proceedings from her control desk. Rachel, her co-star sister and their mum explain what it reveals about disability in the UK

Rachel O’Mahony doesn’t give two hoots that her evolving stage production got five stars from the Guardian . The show may have won awards, had barnstorming reviews and made its audiences weep buckets, but Rachel’s own delight is what matters. As for anyone else who has the pleasure of watching? Rachel puts it perfectly. “Lucky you,” she says.

You see, this joyous, anarchic, different-every-time production has been tailored specifically, by Rachel’s younger sister Flo, to suit the tastes of 35-year-old Rachel, who has learning disabilities, loves Kylie and fart jokes, and is in total control of what happens on stage each night. It’s all in the show’s title: Perfect Show for Rachel.

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Friends, enemies and lovers animate more than 60 years of the author’s remarkable correspondence

John Updike had the mind of a middling middle-class postwar American male, and the prose style of a literary genius. Such a lord of language was he that even the notoriously grudging Vladimir Nabokov afforded him a meed of praise. A reviewer, musing on the disproportion between the style and content of Updike’s fiction, likened him to a lobster with one hugely overgrown claw. It was a comparison Updike was to remember – for all his bland urbanity, on display from start to finish in this mighty volume of his letters, he could be prickly, and did not take slights lightly.

As a novelist he aimed, as he once put it, to “give the mundane its beautiful due”. Apart from a few rare and in some cases ill-advised ventures into the exotic – the court at Elsinore, Africa, the future – his abiding subject was the quotidian life of “ordinary” Americans in the decades between the end of the second world war and the coming of a new technological age in the closing years of the 20th century.

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This story of emancipated young women escaping draconian social strictures brims with enthusiasm and features a cameo from Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Based on a true story, Bill Guttentag’s rousing drama attests to the resilience of women who dare to dream despite draconian social strictures. The film follows Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri), a trailblazing coach and businesswoman in Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) who assembles a robotics team of Afghan girls for international competitions. The young dreamers hail from different walks of life but they all share the same zest for engineering. They face the same dangers too; in a country where women are not encouraged or even allowed to pursue higher levels of education, their quest for medals sees opposition from their own families as well as public scorn from conservatives.

Rule Breakers is at its most thrilling during the competition sequences, which splice together real-life documentary footage of the events with fictional re-enactments. (There’s even an appearance from Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a host.) A breathless enthusiasm thrums through the film, as the camera swirls around the young competitors, all energised by their love for science. These spaces are portrayed as a haven that encourages camaraderie rather than competitiveness, and in a world divided by military conflicts and war, they offer a utopiian vision of international collaboration and solidarity.

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After serving time in jail, actor Allison Mack opens up about her experiences in a group with links to sex trafficking. Plus, a deep dive into Jane Austen

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James Blake speaks to young men about ‘taking the red pill’. Plus: Celebrity MasterChef returns with added Grace Dent. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, BBC Three
James Blake meets the online community of alpha influencer Hamza Ahmed. “No one respects the nice guy,” says Shayne, who “took the red pill” after a breakup. “I don’t worship [Andrew Tate] but I crave what he represents,” says Jack, who is 57 days into his “100-day semen retention journey”. It’s an insightful, honest hour in which even Blake needs to address his past beliefs. Hollie Richardson

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