The events of last year’s Orange Revolution were regarded worldwide as a triumph for democracy. Six months on, however, Ukraine’s future is far from certain.

The scientific briefing with Luke Boulter

With a flash of lightening and a groan from the lab bench ‘the monster’ was born. Constructed from a cocktail of reclaimed body parts, Frankenstein’s creature roams the village, kidnapping maidens and eventually is chased up to a windmill, which is subsequently burnt to the ground by a hoard of pitchfork-wielding villagers. Not all together that inspiring then for Steen Rasmussen, who since early last year has worked obsessively to do what scientists and the eccentrics amongst us have dreamt of for years… create life.

Summer. Oh how we love it. In typical British style at the first hint of blue sky the girls are out in their short skirts and strappy tops and the boys are shedding those shirts, all revealing a bit more flesh than may seem appropriate, especially when it is of the untoned variety.

In the seventies it was vogue to dance around barefoot to John Lennon and campaign to save the world - nowadays people seem to have given up and thrown their maracas away. It is common knowledge that apathy is on the rise, even among young people who traditionally embody the greatest social idealism. Indeed students form a large proportion of the forty per cent of the UK population that doesn’t even turn out to vote.

In the basement of the Leadmill, Sheffield, we arrive half an hour late, to find Fightstar chilling after their sound check. The camp dressing table, with lights running up the side of the mirror that wouldn’t look out of place in Liz Taylor’s home, is overrun with the bands rider; a veritable food mountain, including a student favourite, Smartprice gin.

Elections are so depressing. Most people you ask don’t bother to use their vote, the ones that do are usually caught up in some irrelevant agenda, and many voters will take to the polls with little knowledge at all of the issue they have been given the power to decide. There was clearly a case of this in France and The Netherlands recently as ‘the mob’ chose to vote against the adoption of the European Constitution. I will save the pro-Europe rant for another time however, as what I have in mind today is something far more crucial to all our lives; the prevailing insistence that democracy is something useful.

OK, it’s time to own up - who can’t make their own bed yet? Ok, and who is still at a loss to understand how the washing machine works? Fine, fine… and who still can’t cook? I thought you were doing a PhD? You are?! And you still can’t cook?

Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu is probably not a name you remember from school history lessons; in fact, you may well never have encountered it before. It hardly rolls off the (Western) tongue, and just getting the spelling right requires more effort than the average student is likely to expend in a day.

Behind every door there is…an unseen woman. The Unseen Woman, a production to be performed on Tuesday and Wednesday in Week 9, reveals these women and tells their stories. The innovative interweaving of three contemporary plays by British Asian writers - Bells by Yasmin Whittaker Kahn; Chaos by Azma Dar; and Ammah by Takbir Uddi - will allow British audiences access to a strikingly different culture, but one that very much exists within their own.

Lots of sports day photos have been uploaded to our on-line gallery. Check them out here.

The weekend of week six, Francesca Seeley brought Stephan Poliakoff’s Sweet Panic to the Drama Barn. The play is a dark piece which follows the relationship between child therapist Clare Atwood (Panda Cox) and the neurotic, obsessive mother of one of her patients, Mrs. Trevel (Becky Baxter).

“I’m not most kids … Stuff happens to me that shouldn’t happen, like going on a picnic where you drown.” So begins The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, Liz Jensen’s compelling tale of lies, obsession, and the hidden workings of the human mind.

It was with some degree of trepidation that I picked up Hope in the Dark; another semi-activist, sociological chronicle in the wake of 9/11. I was, however, pleasantly surprised. Rebecca Solnit weaves together significant political events in the period leading up to the new millennium in a thought-provoking and enlightening manner, gradually guiding the reader to a refreshingly ambiguous climax.

In The Flood, David Maine attempts to flesh out the Bible’s rather brief depiction of Noah’s Ark and the forty day flood. He imagines the impracticality of gathering two of every beast whilst building a huge boat in a dry, sparse landscape.

Jennie Erdal’s Ghosting is a literary feast which effectively deconstructs the writing process and sheds light on the enigma of ghost writing. Each character is immediately bought to life, particularly the key player Tiger, the pseudonym Erdal gives to the man she spent years working for, writing articles, even novels, under his name.