19,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Eight short plays, commissioned and developed as part of the Women Centre Stage Festival, that together demonstrate the range, depth and richness of women's writing for the stage. Selected by Sue Parrish, Artistic Director of Sphinx Theatre, these plays offer a wide variety of rewarding roles for women, and are perfect for schools, youth groups and theatre companies to perform. How to Not Sinkby Georgia Christou looks at duty, love and dependency across three generations of women. In Wildernessby April De Angelis, a patient and her psychiatrist head into the wilderness to find out how sane any of us really are. In Chloe Todd Fordham's The Nightclub, three very different women at a gay nightclub in Orlando are caught up in a terrifying hate crime. Fucking Feministsby Rose Lewenstein is a fiercely funny investigation of what feminism means, and what it has become. Winsome Pinnock's Tituba is a one-woman show about Tituba Indian, the enslaved woman who played a central role in the seventeenth-century Salem Witch Trials. In The Road to Huntsville by Stephanie Ridings, a writer researching women who fall in love with men on death row finds herself crossing the line. White Lead by Jessica Siân explores the expectations and responsibilities of being an artist and a woman. In What is the Custom of Your Grief? by Timberlake Wertenbaker, an English schoolgirl whose brother has been killed on active duty in Afghanistan is befriended online by an Afghan girl. Sphinx Theatre has been at the vanguard of promoting, advocating and inspiring women in the arts through productions, conferences and research for more than forty years.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Ähnliche
WOMENCENTRE STAGE
Eight Short Plays By and About Women
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk www.sphinxtheatre.co.ukContents
Dedication
Introduction
Original Production Details
How to Not Sink by Georgia Christou
Wilderness by April De Angelis
The Nightclub by Chloe Todd Fordham
Fucking Feminists by Rose Lewenstein
Tituba by Winsome Pinnock
The Road to Huntsville by Stephanie Ridings
White Lead by Jessica Siân
What is the Custom of Your Grief? by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Biographies
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
For My Comrades-in-ArmsDame Rosemary Squire DBE and Jules Wright
And for Louisa, Tiffany, Helen, Ros,Isabel, Lisa, Ben and Joanna.
IntroductionSue Parrish
‘Women can’t be artists, women are mothers’Sian Ede, Arts Council officer, 1991
The eight plays in this volume first saw the light of day in the Women Centre Stage Festival. They were chosen to show the range, depth and richness of the work that can be created in a celebration of women artists. The Women Centre Stage Festival is an exciting cultural project designed to address and combat women’s exclusion from UK theatre. Sphinx Theatre, founded as the Women’s Theatre Group in 1973 and renamed in 1990, has been in the vanguard of advocating and inspiring women in the arts through productions, conferences and research for four decades. As a kind of feminist-theatre think tank, we initiated the breakthrough Glass Ceiling conferences in the 1990s at the National Theatre, and more recently from 2009, four Vamps, Vixens and Feminists conferences; while landmark productions include Pam Gems’ The Snow Palace and April De Angelis’ modern classic, Playhouse Creatures.
The conferences were a forum for gathering a UK-wide network and forming a sense of solidarity among women in the arts who are often isolated. Leading women artists, academics and journalists shared their professional experiences with packed audiences. For ten years running we hired the NT’s Cottesloe Theatre for the day for the Glass Ceilings, and in 2009, thanks to the good offices of the Literary Manager Sebastian Born, we took over the Olivier Theatre for Vamps, Vixens and Feminists, a sign of dawning consciousness. Many women recount moments of inspiration from these talkshops, and the latest spin-off, Nottingham’s The Party Somewhere Else, took its name from a passing reference of mine to the feeling of exclusion women feel.
However, by 2012 I was haunted by a feeling of extreme Groundhog Day, bearing in mind that I had been involved in campaigning for equality for women in the theatre for over thirty-five years without feeling we’d made much progress. Yes, there had been some improvement since then for women directors and writers, but the figures for female actors remained stubbornly at around 35%. The most recent figures show women writers with work produced at 28%, directors at 36%, and actors at 39%, but nowhere approaching parity for the 51% of the population who are the only majority with the status of a minority. The data shows that out of one hundred and sixty-eight Artistic Directors of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio clients, only thirty-three are women, and they control only 13% of the total ACE theatre budget. Women Centre Stage was created to address this exclusion, at a time when the murmuring for quotas is ever louder.
Sphinx Theatre has always had a feminist vision committed to changing the cultural landscape. We were convinced that if women artists were given space and support they could develop and expand the range of representation of women onstage beyond the endemic cultural stereotypes of wife, mother, mistress, daughter, sister or girlfriend to the male protagonist. We were confident that women could write ‘state of the nation’ plays, away from the domestic arena. We were fired by the passion and the quality of artists we met through our discussions. Finally, in 2014, after several rejections, the Arts Council made an award for the project.
Women Centre Stage, Heroines, began with an invitation from the NT in 2014 to occupy the Temporary Theatre Space (aka the National Theatre Shed) on the South Bank for a weekend in 2015. We had to move fast to get the funding and the programme in place. This offer kickstarted five months of writers’ workshops, submissions, regional collaborations, panel discussions and an initial hothouse meeting which brought together women and men across the arts and education. We developed a writers’ programme of ‘prompts and provocations’; examining classic texts alongside contemporary responses; and salon discussions exploring the creation of female characters who have agency, autonomy within the story, authority as protagonists, and authenticity as complex characters. The Sphinx Test (a tool we developed inspired by the film industry’s Bechdel Test) and an alternative way of thinking about a female protagonist, took shape alongside – it is reproduced on the inside cover of this book. The festival exceeded all our objectives, and delivered the essential elements of any work of art: surprise and enlightenment!
The Temporary Theatre space was a provisional, rough and neutral space admirably suited to the festival spirit. The event was a euphoric success which brought a new and enthusiastic demographic into the NT for a range of pieces; including for Kali Theatre’s searing dissection of oppression in Twelve Women; Hot Tubs and Trampolines’ heart-stopping examination of grief in Mind The Gap; Lucinka Eisler’s mesmerising presentation of old age in A Life in 22 Minutes; the shocking exposé of the power of social media, Boys Will Be Boys from Charlotte Josephine; and the chilling verbatim play Islands by Emma Jowett, documenting violent stalking. Bolton Octagon brought two elegant and elegiac pieces from Timberlake Wertenbaker: What is the Custom of Your Grief? and Memory of Gold. There were wonderful comedic pieces including Prepper by Caroline Moran, brilliantly performed by Abi Tedder; and Karen Featherstone’s school-gate farce, The Real PTA. Three of the most stunning minutes were created by Camilla Harding, in her Guy is a Guy, inhabiting a Stepford Wife dancing to Doris Day, and morphing into a slobby young man before our eyes. To crown the day there were five twenty-four-hour plays, brilliantly diverse, from Roy Williams, April De Angelis, Barney Norris, Rachel De-Lahay and Rona Munro (who emailed her script from 30,000 feet en route across the Atlantic). But who could forget Tricia Kelly as Barney’s unctuous C of E Bishop?
With a day’s preparation, the NT crew worked miracles to enhance with sound and lighting twenty-four plays, created by seventy-one actors, twenty-four directors and twenty-six writers. It was an exhilarating experimental festival, bringing together experienced playwrights and new writers who were graduating from workshops, pub stages and studio theatres; creating dynamic plays with women as the focus; enticing 1,000 people through the doors; and turning the world upside down!
The second Women Centre Stage Festival, Powerplay, was held in November 2016, at the warm invitation of Edward Hall, Artistic Director of Hampstead Theatre. This offered the challenge and opportunity of a sophisticated main stage, a studio and a rehearsal space, facilitating an expanded festival with a range of performances, and with enhanced funding. We were concerned that the presentations should be as finished as possible in this super-modern theatre. Several pieces from the NT were further developed, and have since gone on to tour and be performed at other events. Again we were delighted to bring leading writers and directors together with emerging talents, through our writers’ group, and the twenty-four-hour plays. We were able to offer extended rehearsal for two major new pieces – Wilderness by April De Angelis, and Tituba by Winsome Pinnock – and development time for Camilla Harding’s Guy is a Guy, which became Man Up; and a second performance for plays premiered at the Bush Theatre, Theatre503 and Birmingham Rep. Joining the Hiccup Project on the main stage, a new collaboration with Graeae’s women writers yielded a stunning What I Was Told I Could Be & What I’ve Become, which was a new departure for them; and Tanika Gupta’s A Perfect Match came from Stratford East. The twenty-four-hour plays, triggered as in 2015 by newspaper headlines, produced star performances from Beatie Edney, Stella Gonet, Maggie Steed and Ann Mitchell for, respectively, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Vinay Patel, Charlene James and Howard Brenton. With packed audiences across the three auditoria, Hampstead was buzzing! The collective anticipation of new stories, characters and experiences was palpable all day, and crowned by Dame Janet Suzman and Kathryn Pogson’s performances of the comic and earthy Wilderness earning a standing ovation; and the electric performance by Cecilia Noble of Tituba. One hundred and thirty-two artists took part: over seven hours of performances there were twenty-five plays, four workshops and a panel discussion.
Both of these Women Centre Stage Festivals fizzed with creativity, providing opportunities for showcasing and networking among artists and programmers, and showing that there is a wealth of talent ready to rise to the challenge of making brilliant theatre for main stages. They were designed to work as immersive events, so the impact was cumulative.
There are upwards of seventy young women’s theatre groups subsisting on crumbs from the funding table. There needs to be a redistribution of opportunity and funding to bring leading women writers and directors, and emerging talents to our main stages. This anthology is one more attempt to rectify the gender balance. I hope you will enjoy these plays as much as we did at their creation.
LondonMay 2018
Sue Parrish is the Artistic Director of Sphinx Theatre.
The first seven plays in this anthology were first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, on 20 November 2016, with the following casts and creative teams:
HOW TO NOT SINK by Georgia Christou
The cast was as follows:
JOJO Kirsty Adams
KIM Zara Plessard
JEAN Miranda Bell
Director Helen Barnett
Commissioned and produced by Sphinx Theatre.
WILDERNESS by April De Angelis
The cast was as follows:
WOMAN Janet Suzman
DOCTOR Kathryn Pogson
Director Susannah Tresilian
Commissioned and produced by Sphinx Theatre.
THE NIGHTCLUB by Chloe Todd Fordham
The cast was as follows:
BETTY Marlene Sidaway
AMINA Nita Mistry
HELEN Karlina Grace-Paseda
Director Lisa Cagnacci
Commissioned and produced by Theatre503 and Mama Quilla Productions.
FUCKING FEMINISTS by Rose Lewenstein
The cast was as follows:
Ania Sowinski
Jody Jameson
Karlina Grace-Paseda
Anna Elijas
Director Lisa Cagnacci
Commissioned and produced by Theatre503 and Mama Quilla Productions.
TITUBA by Winsome Pinnock
The cast was as follows:
Cecilia Noble
Director Winsome Pinnock
Commissioned and produced by Sphinx Theatre. The research and development of the piece was supported by a grant from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation. A shorter version of the show was first presented at the Women Centre Stage Festival in 2016, produced by Sue Parrish, with Cecilia Noble in the title role.
THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE by Stephanie Ridings
The cast was as follows:
Stephanie Ridings
Director Jonathan V McGrath
Producer Pippa Frith
Commissioned by China Plate, mac birmingham and Warwick Arts Centre. Supported by Arts Council England, Birmingham REP, The Sir Barry Jackson Trust and the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.
WHITE LEAD by Jessica Siân
The cast was as follows:
VENNI Karen Bryson
DIDO Jessica Sian
CAROL Kirsty Bushell
Director Chelsea Walker
Commissioned and produced by Sphinx Theatre.
WHAT IS THE CUSTOM OF YOUR GRIEF? by Timberlake Wertenbaker was first performed at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, on 29th March 2015.
The cast was as follows:
EMILY Anna Tierney
ZARGHONA Nadia Clifford
Director Elizabeth Newman
Commissioned and produced by the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, for the 2015 National Theatre Women Centre Stage.
Women Centre Stage supported by Arts Council England, Women’s Playhouse Trust, The Unity Theatre Trust, Backstage Trust, David Teale Charitable Trust and Freemantle Media. Special thanks to the National Theatre and Hampstead Theatre.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
