I saw Cinage’s Talkin’ About My Generation during the Edinburgh Fringe. It was performed in the Leeds Beckett room as part of an exhibition of the Richard Demarco archive to celebrate 70 years of the fringe. Many of the cast of Talkin’ celebrated their own 70th birthdays a fair while ago and the rest won’t … Continue reading
Cockpit, Bridget Boland, Lyceum, Edinburgh
I first came across Bridget Boland’s Cockpit some twenty-five years ago when I was looking for plays by women in the first half of the twentieth century. Cockpit was a wonderful find: a drama set at the end of the Second World War in which a German theatre provides a temporary ‘home’ for Displaced Persons … Continue reading
Caryl Churchill: Celebrating International Women’s Day with Cambridge University Press
For well over half a century, Caryl Churchill’s plays have been enriching the landscape of British theatre. As David Hare astutely observed on her seventieth birthday celebrations held at the Royal Court in 2008: ‘The principal question you can ask of any artist is: what difference would it have made if they’d never existed? Would … Continue reading
The Sphinx Test
Given the persistent inequalities of the theatre profession, Sue Parrish, artistic director of the Sphinx Theatre (http://www.sphinxtheatre.co.uk/), the UK’s longest running women’s theatre company, launched the ‘sphinx test’. The idea for the test was proposed by Rosalind Philips and developed with Helen Barnett and Parrish. It’s inspired by the Bechdel test for film which prompts … Continue reading
The Story of M, SuAndi, Goldsmiths, 19th January 2017
It was a privilege to be involved in ‘Aspiration and Representation’, a day-long event at Goldsmiths, University London (19th January 2017), curated by Deirdre Osborne and focused on issues of identity, past, present and future. And it was an absolute privilege to have another opportunity see SuAndi perform her signature show, The Story of M, … Continue reading
The Women’s March on London January 21, 2017 (a snapshot)
Trafalgar Square 21st of January 2017. The rally that rounded off the Women’s March on London following the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the USA the day before and protesting against the values and attitudes he embodies, has finished. It’s been a long day and despite the brilliant sunshine, a cold one, especially … Continue reading
Blasmia, Daha-Wassa, Morocco
When theatre excels, it gets under the skin, leaves its experiential mark. This is absolutely the case with the performance of Blasmia (‘nameless’) by the Moroccan company Daha-Wassa. Without a shadow of doubt, this was the highlight of the annual arts festival in Tangiers where the show had its avant-première (16 September). (You can … Continue reading
The Suppliant Women, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh – Feminism, Theatre and Democracy
Theatre, feminism and democracy. David Greig’s new version of Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Women has it all. As the first show at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre under Greig’s artistic directorship, it augers a commitment to following in the ancient tradition of placing theatre at the heart of civil life; as crucial to addressing urgent … Continue reading
Peaky Blinders: Impossible Masculinity and the British Western
It’s now several weeks since Series 3 of the UK TV drama Peaky Blinders finished broadcasting but I have often found myself thinking about this drama Loosely based on actual historical events, it is set in post-World War 1 Birmingham (the British midlands) and follows the rise to power of a criminal gang dominated by … Continue reading
From Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own to Ophelias Zimmer (Royal Court)
In A Room of One’s Own Virginia Wolf pondered ‘how a woman nowadays would write a poetic tragedy in five acts. Would she use verse? – would she not use prose rather?’ Wolf breaks off her speculative questions, acknowledging that these ‘lie in the twilight of the future’. At this future present time, Ophelias Zimmer, … Continue reading
Drama Queens Review 