Alumni – Orbital Magazine

Full Disclosure: The Addams Family Musical

18Nov

By Emma HalahanNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Theatre & Performance

Full Disclosure: The Addams Family Musical

After wowing us with campus hit Love Island: The Musical, Director Harriet Williams, Musical Director Daniel Looseley and Choreographer Bryony O’Hare take on the musical adaption of cult film and TV series, The Addams Family. With a puff of dry ice and a scarily sombre prologue, the SU main hall ‘moves towards the darkness’ into the disastrous Addams Family mansion – and full disclosure, you are greeted immediately by some stand out performances. Newcomer Emily Quillin makes a delightfully macabre Morticia Addams with both a stellar acting and singing performance that draws every laugh, gasp and blush. From motherly mentor to seductress señorita, Quillin carries that signature Morticia mannerism with her throughout the show, providing an energy unmatched – a testament to Harriet William...

22Mar

By Bryony LockNo Comments

Features

An Audience with Example

Elliot Gleave, better known by his stage name ‘Example’, graduated Royal Holloway in 2003 with a BA Media Arts degree. University is a strange and wonderful time where we meet lots of different people. Everyone has so much potential, yet so little knowledge of what the future holds. Example is a perfect illustration of the amazing accomplishments that we can all obtain after studying at this university. I was lucky enough to speak to him about his experiences at Royal Holloway. Why Royal Holloway? I fell in love with RHUL for many reasons. The grounds, the halls, the Union. I remember going to the open day, it was beautiful day, Founders was there looking like Hogwarts’ distant cousin. Then I visited the Media department and the facilities and staff just inspired me. Did you go to...

Over 400 Alumni Sign Open Letter to Paul Layzell

12Mar

By Michele TheilNo Comments

News

Over 400 Alumni Sign Open Letter to Paul Layzell

Over 400 alumni of Royal Holloway have signed an open letter to Principal Layzell addressing the college’s response to UCU strikes as well as Layzell’s previous comments concerning the gender pay gap, which Orbital reported in January. This comes directly after Layzell’s response, both towards staff and students, in the face of strikes has come under fire. The letter was written by alumni Joe Rayment, Jamie Green and Jen Mills. It has since been signed by over 400 graduates, including four former members of the university’s Governing Council. Rayment, a current Labour councillor in Bath, said that he was “extremely disturbed by what has happened here in recent months” and he hopes “that our voices are heard and that Professor Layzell will respond to us and explain exactly how he w...

7Feb

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Sports & Socs

The Atlantic Discovery

Royal Holloway Alumni Benjamin Ajayi-Obe, Issac Kenyon and Jack Hopkins achieved their goal to set the world record for continuous rowing on an indoor rowing machine, also called an ergo. This took place in Founders Square from Friday Jan 12 until Sunday Jan 14, where they beat the previous record of 30 hours and rowed continuously for 33 hours. This world record attempt was dedicated to raise as much money as possible for the Berkshire MS Therapy Centre, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and Mind Charity. These charities were chosen by the team members both for personal reasons as well as for the great work these charities do. They created a JustGiving page for donations and, as of writing, they have raised over £2000, half of their goal of £4000. Each and “every person who donates via...

5Feb

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Features

Debrief: Rebecca Wilson

Speaking to Rebecca Wilson, a RHUL alumni who has taken the heartwarming decision to start her charity for homelessness, was a great pleasure of mine. We discussed her charitable pursuits, her personal motivations within charity work and the label of “activist”, which is a title she is “more than happy to take on”. At RHUL, Wilson studied English and Comparative Literature and began to want to get involved with charity work sometime during her second year when she felt that the tedium of writing an essay for her degree did not enable her to enact any sort of change in the real world. Her motivations were “initially quite political” as she is considered to be “quite socialist” in her views but they changed over time and, during her final year, “it seemed like the natural step to start [h...

Royal Holloway Alumna Makes The Apprentice final

17Dec

By Joanne ArcherNo Comments

News

Royal Holloway Alumna Makes The Apprentice final

Lord Alan Sugar is searching for his next business partner in the BBC’s popular reality game show, The Apprentice. The series, which spans 14 weeks, puts businesspeople through tough trials of elimination to find the candidate with the best skills and business model. The winner will secure a £250,000 investment into their business, shared with Lord Sugar as a 50% stake holder. Former Royal Holloway student, Sarah Lynn, has made it to the final round against competitor James White. Sarah Lynn studied at Royal Holloway from 1999, graduating with a degree in History and Politics in 2002. In June 2010 Lynn set up her business, Sweets in the City, which she has been working to improve over the past 7 years. The company produces “hand-picked and hand-packed” sweet b...

12Nov

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Features

Hidden Heroes

In celebration of Black History Month, Orbital Magazine decided to take a look at the successes of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) alumna in the history of Bedford College, Holloway College and Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). There are many prominent people that attended Royal Holloway and Bedford New College but there are only a few that have made such a difference in the world. Sarah Parker Redmond attended Royal Holloway’s predecessor, Bedford College. It is often not mentioned that Bedford College, established in 1849 “the first higher education college for women in the UK”, previously merged with Royal Holloway College to become what we know it as today.Redmond was a lecturer on slavery and race and was part of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS). She is...

4Jul

By Beth CarrNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

Losing It: Reshaping Sex Education

CONTENT WARNING: Rape. Beth Carr shines a spotlight on alumna Nina Lemon and her play ‘Losing It’. Watching a musical about sex education isn’t the most usual Friday activity for students, but that is exactly the theme of the latest play by Peer Productions, written and directed by Royal Holloway alumni Nina Lemon. ‘Losing It’ follows a group of school friends as they look back on their seven years at secondary school and the questions they had about sex and relationships, as well as examining what went well and what went wrong in their love lives. The play fits with Peer Productions’ vision “to use theatre to genuinely change young people’s lives” and is being toured around 30 local schools to tell pupils what they really want to know about sex and relationships. It was develop...

27Jan

By Beth CarrNo Comments

Features

Meg Radios for Rob

Beth Carr reports on Insanity Radio’s recent 36 hour radio marathon for charity. What would it take for you to do an all-nighter? For alumni Meg Walker, not sleeping for two days is just a part of raising money for CLIC Sargent - and we got to experience the whole 36 hours of ‘Radio Robbie’ with her, live on 103.2FM and via rhubarbTV’s live stream. It’s certainly not the most usual fundraising method, but this isn’t the first time Meg’s been on air for a long time. The idea of doing a marathon started after her helping with the 128.7 hour marathon back in 2014 and when the opportunity came up last year to be part of the annual Insanity Radio marathons at Easter she jumped at the chance and took on 26.2 hours of live broadcasting, raising just shy of £1000. The duration of her firs...

28Oct

By Olivia AtkinsonNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Film & TV

Suffragette: the fear of change

Family movie night premiered Sarah Gavron’s latest film, "Suffragette"; a raw, eye opening success that has introduced significant thought and discussion both within the public eye and my own living room. Not a single word was spoken as my family and I were fixated on the motion picture. In my awestruck eyes, this interpretation of the development of our democratic history perfectly encapsulates the lengths it took for the women of the past 100 years to get to 1 vote for the women of today. The film highlights the immense effort, thought and planning that went into protests, both passive and violent. Beatings carried out in the streets and the death of world-renowned martyr, Emily Wilding-Davison, were incredibly intense moments and were, at times, rather grotesque and shocking, yet w...