Listen to my extended radio report from Harlem on US presidential election night, and after. Includes an interview with the Rev Al Sharpton on the challenges ahead for the Obama administration and for the civil rights movement.

“Everybody here that voted for John McCain, raise your hand!” said Michael Hardy into the microphone. Nobody raised their hand. On 145th Street in Upper Harlem, the crowd in the meeting room of the House of Justice (motto: “No Justice, No Peace”) was feeling good. “It certainly looks like there’s gonna be a new day… read more +

It is six hours before Mark O’Rowe’s play, ‘Terminus’, opens in New York. Eileen Walsh is standing in a dim crossbeam, shrouded in mist, talking out to the audience. Mark O’Rowe is coughing. A technician is talking loudly. A couple of others are looking at dimly-lit laptops, or moving quietly through the gloom, fixing things. “The drill for several years has been bed alone, then tears.” Eileen Walsh plays against the rhythm of O’Rowe’s verse. She lets the rhyme announce itself, as if her character were unaware that there were anything distinctive about her speech.