As she unveils The Trembling Forest with an ensemble of clay-covered performers, the great dance disruptor looks back on decades of radical and autobiographical shows

Maybe it’s inevitable by the age of 75 that you’ve lived a number of lives. For Emilyn Claid , that’s meant the leap from ballet dancer in Toronto to the squats of grungy 1969 New York (via Martha Graham’s garden), to pioneering the New Dance scene in 1970s London, to artistic director, academic and psychotherapist (not to mention mother, grandmother), and then in her eighth decade, full circle to being a performer again.

It was after realising “I was leaving three-quarters of myself out” that Claid made 2022’s comeback solo show Untitled , appearing strong, sensual, funny and provocative, dressed in leather vest and a fur cloak. She put the work in to get back on stage at 72 (“A lot of press-ups and sit-ups”) but at the same time, she says, it was absolutely natural, like coming home. “Not being at home like a comfortable sofa,” she clarifies. “The excitement of knowing a whole world that’s familiar to me and yet is always constantly changing.”

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The double Oscar-winner responded to the president’s criticism of his New York Times op-ed last summer urging Joe Biden to step down for re-election, saying it was his ‘civic duty’

George Clooney has said he is unconcerned about the persistent verbal abuse levelled at him by Donald Trump, after the president labelled him a “fake movie actor” on Truth Social.

Speaking to Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Clooney said: “I don’t care. I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time. My job is not to please the president of the United States. My job is to try and tell the truth when I can and when I have the opportunity. I am well aware of the idea that people will not like that.”

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To mark 20 years since the first ever YouTube video, we’d like to hear your favourite YouTube TV shows

The first YouTube video, a 19-second clip posted entitled “Me at the zoo” posted by co-founder Jawed Karim, was uploaded on 23 April 2005. Now the most popular video-sharing platform in the world, YouTube has expanded far beyond short clips and into TV streaming.

To mark the anniversary, we’d like to hear your favourite YouTube TV shows of the moment. You can tell us your favourite and why below.

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It was the biggest open secret in TV history – but even though millions knew it was coming, that death still stunned beyond belief. Now, can it really achieve the impossible … and make us root for the killer?

This article contains spoilers for the The Last of Us season two. Please do not read unless you have seen the first two episodes.

When is a twist not a twist? This is a question many people will be asking after this week’s brutal episode of The Last of Us. Titled Through the Valley, it demonstrated more clearly than ever that the show has two types of viewer: those who primarily know it as a television series and were stunned beyond belief by the violent, unheralded death of Pedro Pascal’s Joel at the hands of Kaitlyn Dever’s vengeful Abby; and those who have played the video game on which it is based.

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Sisters 360, Khan’s new play for children, tells the story of two hijab-wearing skateboarding sisters in Bradford. He hopes it will upend lazy ideas around Muslim girls – and bring new audiences to the theatre

Asif Khan first heard about Lena, Maysa and Ameya – the three Muslim skateboarding sisters from Hull who became social media stars in 2022 with their skills – from his mother-in-law. “She does this a lot. She’ll send me an article and say: ‘You could write a play about this,’” laughs Khan. But there was something about this particular story that piqued his interest. “They all wore the hijab, lived with their mum and had an Instagram account where they did their own raps and filmed skateboarding tricks … I immediately thought: Oh OK, this is a good premise for a play.”

So, he set about adapting it for the stage. He contacted the girls’ parents and had a “good, long hour’s chat”. “They were excited that someone was interested in doing a play about them,” says Khan, 44, who also works as an actor. The result of those chats is Sisters 360, a play about two Bradford-based hijab-wearing, skateboarding stepsisters, Fatima and Salima, aimed at audiences between the ages of eight and 12.

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A Mancunian in supported housing uses heroin to manage his intrusive thoughts in this well-researched but horribly violent examination of mental health issues

Gino Evans makes his feature debut with this painful and disturbing drama which has some unwatchably horrible and violent moments. It’s set in Manchester and tells the story of a heroin user fresh out of prison and struggling to sort himself out. That might sound like a pretty standard beginning for gritty British social-realism, but with maturity and what looks like solid research, Evans turns his film into an examination of mental health issues. It’s not for the faint-hearted though, with some scenes in which people hurt other people very realistically.

Ex-Emmerdale actor Joe Gill plays Danny, who is released from prison into supported living after a short stretch for theft. Danny starts using again immediately, and he says in voiceover that he takes heroin to feel normal; it manages his OCD and intrusive thoughts (“I feel fucked up for even thinking them”). We are shown the intrusive thoughts that pop into his head: sitting opposite the manager of his supported housing, out of nowhere Danny pictures himself punching her repeatedly in the face. It’s brutal, and there are more scenes like this – realistic-looking and photographed with cold intensity by cinematographer Sam Cronin. I watched it clenched and tense – which is presumably the point, to show what it feels like to live like Danny, uncomfortably alert with adrenaline.

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F Scott Fitzgerald’s Long Island novel has become a grand stage production at the London Coliseum

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Visitors to Buckingham Palace will be able to see works by official tour artists who accompanied visits to 96 countries

Forty years ago the then Prince of Wales invited, at his own expense, the artist John Ward to join an official visit to Italy as an official tour artist, with the brief to draw or paint whatever inspired him.

Since then, 42 artists to have undertaken this role, collectively visiting 95 countries during 69 tours, with their work now going on display at Buckingham Palace.

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Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt upends audience expectations in a feature debut that’s hyper-aware of the origin story’s sexual and patriarchal imagery

Norwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt makes her feature debut with an ingenious revisionist body-horror version of Cinderella, lavishly costumed and designed. There are twists in the style of David Cronenberg and Walerian Borowczyk, with (maybe inevitably) echoes of Carrie and Alien. In one scene, there could even be a nod to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Cynical widow Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) remarries a well-heeled widower somewhere in 18th-century central Europe; he then makes her a widow for the second time by fatally gorging on cake at the wedding breakfast. As a result, Rebekka is left financially embarrassed with her plain daughter Elvira (Lea Myren), Elvira’s kid sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) and a new stepdaughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), a beautiful young woman who haughtily resents the ugly Elvira. Instead of paying for a funeral for her late husband, Rebekka lets his body rot somewhere in the house while spending money on bizarre cosmetic treatments for Elvira – brutal nose- and eyelash-remodelling – in the hope that Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose her for his bride at his forthcoming ball. But Elvira rashly swallows a tapeworm to allow her to indulge a passion for cakes (Ozempic not being available in those days) and calamity approaches.

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