Originally one of the reasons for starting this blog was that Elaine and I wanted an outlet to express our enthusiasm for the TV police drama Scott and Bailey. Based on an idea by performers Suranne Jones who plays Rachel Bailey and Sally Lindsay and written by Sally Wainwright who also wrote Last Tango in … Continue reading »
100 Deeds: What would you do for gender equality today?
100 years ago this June suffragette Emily Wilding Davison gave her life for the cause by throwing herself in front of the King’s horse during a race at the Epsom Derby. While her action may have been ( and still is) contraversial it was, in its own way, successful in terms of gaining publicity for … Continue reading »
Contemporary Gendered Performance & Practice – Queen’s University, Belfast
In recent years it has been the exception rather than the rule to encounter conferences engaging with gender, theatre and performance matters – or, to put this another way, with the idea that gender does indeed still matter in our discipline/s. And so it is that I come to find myself personally and politically heartened … Continue reading »
Peggy Shaw’s Ruff. Chelsea Theatre, World’s End London April 2013.
For anyone who does not know who Peggy Shaw is, she is a multiple award winning queer performance artist and activist based in the US who started performing in the later 1970s and in the early 1980s with Lois Weaver (who also co-wrote and directs Ruff) she co-founded the company Split Britches. I can understand … Continue reading »
Inspector Norse by Lipservice. Lancaster Grand March 2013
Although over the years they have worked with a wide range of talented directors, designers, technicians and administrators, essentially Lipservice is a two woman operation. Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding established the company in Manchester in the mid 1980s and over the years it has developed something of the status of ‘an institution’, at least … Continue reading »
Aurora Metro – in Support of Women Writers
There’s a volume on my theatre book shelves that is well thumbed and highly annotated: The Women Writers’ Handbook. Published by Aurora Metro in 1990, this award-winning publication (it won the Pandora Award for Women in Publishing) has served me over the years as a rare and valuable creative source for women’s theatre writing and … Continue reading »
Be Like Water. Hetain Patel
Be Like Water. Hetain Patel February, Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster Hetain Patel was born in Bolton the son of a car worker who came to the Britain from India in the 1970s (we don’t hear anything about his Mum but maybe that’s for another show). At the start of the show Patel communicates with us via … Continue reading »
A Time to Reap – Royal Court Theatre Upstairs
Women’s reproductive rights were a staple of second-wave feminist drama, surfacing in plays such as Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom or Sarah Daniels’ Byrthrite. Now they are back at the Royal Court in a new play, A Time to Reap, by emerging Polish dramatist, Anna Wakulik, who participated in the Court’s International Residency in 2011. A … Continue reading »
Feast: Royal Court & Young Vic Co-Production
Feast, as the title suggests, is a rich recipe, this for serving up Yoruba culture in a lavish dish of playwriting, music and dance. The Yoruba vision came from Elyse Dodgson, Head of the Royal Court’s International Department, and the production ranks as one of the Court’s most ambitious international projects to-date. With the Royal … Continue reading »
So Did One Billion Rise (and The Vagina Monologues, Lancaster).
Global So did one billion rise? It is hard to tell. In the UK this was partly because the main news channels did not appear to perceive this worldwide campaign to highlight and protest against rape and violence against one billion women per year to be a ‘top’ story. Indeed for the BBC it appears … Continue reading »
