Category: Feminist theatre
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This week's Sunday Theatre question is about girl-power on stage – what is your favourite play or production with an all-female cast? Theatre's gender balance still has a way to go, but it feels like it has improved in recent years. Do you think? My choice for this makes a thing of having an all-female…
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Writer Amy Bethan Evans' new play, Tinted, is another piece that explores what life is like for the visually impaired. While her previous play, Libby's Eyes, exposed the Kafka-esque nature of the benefits system, Tinted takes on friendships and dating. Charlotte Eyres in Tinted, Vault Festival. Georgia Harris Photography Charlotte Eyres plays Laura, a visually…
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Writer and performer Katie Arnstein's one-woman show Sticky Door is about how she planned to take back control of her love life but ended up learning to live with past trauma. Katie Arnstein, Sticky Door © Lidia Crisafulli It starts at Christmas 2013 when life seems to be conspiring against her. She is between acting…
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If Nor Woman Neither sounds familiar it's from Hamlet when the prince is talking about losing interesting in life and feeling misunderstood by his friends. Nor Woman Neither ©Laura Dorn Photography It's a curiously poignant title for a sharply funny coming of age story about the struggle of turning childhood dreams into reality while navigating…
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"You'll get the drama of a fight night coupled with the laughter of a comedy night." Fighter (Stratford Circus Arts) is the story of a single mum who decides to take up boxing. Set in a boxing gym with cast that includes young boxers, I asked writer/performer Libby Liburd and performer Cathy Tyson about the…
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Music and a final dance metaphorically lifts Emilia and her message onto shoulders and had the audience leaping up for a standing ovation. Clare Perkins (Emilia 3) Saffron Coomber (Emilia 1) and Adelle Leonce (3) in Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre. Photo credit: Helen Murray. I've read reviews of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's play Emilia that…
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Mixing the more colourful and camp with the harsh realities of inequality and creative restaint for the Iranian women is a powerful storytelling device. Nathan Kiley in Lipstick A Fairy Tale of Iran. Photo: Flavia Fraser-Cannon A catwalk divides the seats at the Omnibus Theatre on which drag queen in green sequined dress is lip…
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Last year saw the #metoo movement explode and finally expose the appalling behaviour women can experience, was Pinter ahead of the curve? Pinter Six of the Pinter at the Pinter season is the first that I can say I quite enjoyed but it didn't stop a nagging question I've had for a while: Was Pinter…
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So I've published my favourite fringe plays list and my least favourite plays list, time now for my best plays of 2018 overall, gleaned from everything I've seen – large productions and small, commercial theatres, subsidised and fringe: via GIPHY Misty, Trafalgar Studios A play which put the pulse back into the West End and…