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
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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
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
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
The Preston Bill – Andy Smith (The Storey, Lancaster)
Andy Smith’s The Preston Bill is a one-man tour through a twentieth and twenty-first century history of events that are personal and epic: chronicle the imagined life of an ordinary, Preston-born, Northern, working-class man, Bill, and mark local, regional, national and international events that underpin and shape a shifting social-political landscape. As the chronicler … Continue reading
Escaped Alone – Caryl Churchill
Escaped Alone (now playing at the Royal Court Theatre) evinces Churchill writing at her most eloquent and politically charged finest. Not since Top Girls in 1982 has she given us an all-female cast: here, four women in their seventies gather in a sunny garden to gossip over afternoon tea. But this fifty-minute drama brings a … Continue reading
Here We Go – Caryl Churchill
Here We Go, Caryl Churchill’s short, 45-minute play at the National, directed by Dominic Cooke, has divided the critics. They either love it or loathe it. I find myself being schizophrenically split between being deeply moved by the play’s reflections on mortality and yet somewhat frustrated by the lack of a more explicit, palpable political … Continue reading
Drama Queens Review 