I used to be scathing about storytelling for adults as a genre, perceiving it as all a bit too overstated and ‘hey nonny nonny’ for my taste. Then I encountered the brilliant ‘intercultural’ storyteller Vayu Naidu and had a road-to-Damascus revelation that just like any other mode of performance in the right hands, it can … Continue reading
HEAR ME ROAR. Theatre Festival to Celebrate International Women’s Day
To celebrate International Women’s Day there will be a Theatre Festival entitled HEAR ME ROAR! taking place in various venues in the city of Lancaster 6-8th March. There will be a host of performance events by (amongst others) Amy and Rosanna Cade, Lowri Evans, Eggs Collective and include a flash mob Kate Bush ‘rush’ to … Continue reading
Monologues for Women and Sarah Daniels
Methuen recently commissioned me to write an introduction for a new edition of Sarah Daniels’ Masterpieces, a play which debuted in 1983 and in which Daniels dramatized her politically provocative and powerful radical-feminist critique of pornography. Coming back to Masterpieces I was forcibly struck by the way in which over thirty years later the issue … Continue reading
The Fall – Television Crime Drama, Serial Killers, Feminism and Acting.
While I like crime fiction in general, a while back I started avoiding narratives centred around serial killers whether in the medium of novels or film or TV. While working within genre conventions can be highly creative, this seems to me to have become a particularly limited sub-genre in which, in most cases novelty is … Continue reading
3 Winters Tena Štivičić, Lyttleton, National Theatre
More often than not it is the image which lingers the most after a performance that opens up my subsequent points of reflection. In the case of Štivičić’s Croatian-based 3 Winters now playing at the National Theatre until 3 February 2015 there are actually two images that made a lasting impression – one in the … Continue reading
40 Minutes. Lena Simic. The Institute for Art and the Practice of Dissent at Home, Liverpool.
On Sunday the 30th November I went to a performance entitled 40 Minutes given by Lena Simic at the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home. This event was also a party to mark Lena’s 40 birthday and the ‘Institute’ is actually based in the spare room of her home in Anfield, … Continue reading
The Circus of Horrors: Night of the Zombie : the limits of irony, parody and pastiche?
The Circus of Horrors: Night of the Zombie : the limits of irony, parody and pastiche? Lancaster Grand Theatre, 28th November 2014 The Circus of Horrors has been around since the 1995 when they premiered at Glastonbury, and riding a wave of interest in ‘alternative’ circus created by slicker operations like Archaos and also in … Continue reading
Abba Museum – Stockholm
The Abba Museum is a relatively recent addition to the Museum district in Stockholm (it opened in May 2013) – so recent in fact that it could do with just a few more signposts. But follow in the tracks of the female-friendly groups as my daughter and I did on our visit in September and … Continue reading
Best Before End. Curious (Warwick University UK, 30 July 2014).
Much of the work that occurs within the broad category of contemporary ‘post-dramatic’ performance to which Best Before End might be said to belong, attempts to use the resources of the theatre in an allusive and poetic fashion. This particular show however, simply is a poem. This means that (like all the best poetry) Best … Continue reading
From Morocco – Hadda, Schizophrenia and Larmes au Khol
(Larmes au Khol ) I’ve recently returned from a trip to Morocco where I attended the annual, June conference organised by Professor Khalid Amine, President of the Tangier-based International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS). It’s the second time I’ve been able to attend this conference; on both occasions I experienced this as a culturally valuable … Continue reading
