Women’s Theatre Festival 50th Anniversary events
Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-92
An exhibition by Unfinished Histories, curated by Susan Croft at London Performance Studios, the Penarth Centre, Penarth St, London SE15 1TR, 8th November to 1st December 2024
and on Saturday 30th November Radical Rediscovery: the Symposium Booking link here soon
How to get to London Performance Studios
Why now?
We are celebrating the 50th (plus – actually now the 51st – anniversary of the first Women’s Theatre Festival in Britain. Hosted by Inter-Action at ED Berman‘s Almost Free Theatre, the 1973 festival was the foundation for numerous careers, campaigns, creative works, conferences and calls for action and began fifty years of feminist change in theatre, the effects of which are still with us today. It also led to the formation of Women’s Theatre Group (now Sphinx Theatre Group), later that of Monstrous Regiment and thence to many more, with feminist theatre companies and initiatives popping up all over the place with more than 80 women’s companies on our list by 1990. Among those UH interviewees who took part in that first festival were Anne Engel, Lily Susan Todd and Michelene Wandor, while others attending included Lyn Ashley, playwright Pam Gems, Dinah Brooke, artist Tina Keane and numerous others.
Following the festival, in 1974, Women’s Theatre Group went on to devise the play Fantasia, performed at Oval House, about women’s sexual fantasies. Another group of women including Lily Susan Todd and Pam Gems set up The Women’s Company and performed pam’s play Go West, Young Woman! about women in the opening of the US West, at the Roundhouse in 1974.
In 2024 Unfinished Histories has organised a series of events to mark these 50 years since the festival and all that they have brought about, as part of FYFFI our new project to mark Fifty Years of the Fight for Inclusion in conjunction with our partners on FYFFI London Performance Studios (LPS).
Events so far:
The events were launched in 2024 with a week of walks Women in the (Alternative) West End 12th to 15th March.
This was followed on 27th June with talking the Talk and Walking the Walk, a series of live oral history interviews at the Soho Poly with:
– Caroline Eves
– Elaine Loudon
– Olusola Oyeleye
– Rukhsana Ahmad
These will be made available in due course via the web site/
In June and July at LPS we staged four workshops and two staged readings of plays by women that emerged out of the women’s theatre movement in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
They were:
Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven by Jane Arden (1969) workshop and reading, directed by Kirsty Housley
Photo: Virginie Taylor
Go West, Young Woman! by Pam Gems (1974), directed by Kirsty Housley, workshop
The Wind of Change by Winsome Pinnock (1987), directed by Kaleya Baxe
Ophelia by Melissa Murray (1979), directed by Kaleya Baxe
All four plays will be published in November by Montez Press in a volume edited and introduced by Susan Croft, together with the performance texts / scenarios of:
Minutes by Hesitate and Demonstrate (1979) and
Room by Natasha Morgan (1981)
bringing together six fascinating and complex pieces, most of them never before published.
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2023 Events included:
A 1973 Bonanza: 50 Years of Feminist Theatre
The event will mark a first step in marking the 50th anniversary of the first Women’s Theatre Festival later this year. Susan Croft of Unfinished Histories will be taking part on a panel as part of the brilliant Calm Down Dear festival at Camden People’s Theatre, organised by So La Flair theatre on Saturday 3rd June in the afternoon (Booking link here).
Here’s the gen from their web site:
Camden People’s Theatre and So La Flair invite you to launch the 10th year of CPT’s Annual Feminist Theatre Festival Calm Down Dear.
This event celebrates 10 years of Calm Down Dear and marks the 50 year anniversary of the first Women’s Theatre Festival in 1973, championing 50 years of feminist theatre making and charting its evolution over the last five decades.
This is an opportunity for intergenerational connection and conversation on progress made and what agendas lie ahead. As was the first women’s theatre festival in 1973, this anniversary 50 years later offers us another milestone stop-point to gather together and check in on the state of gender parity in the UK theatre industry.
The event will begin at 2.30pm with a panel discussion on feminist theatre ecology with panelists including Calm Down Dear 2023 programmer Abbi Greenland from RASHDASH, Jessica Kaliissa, Lily Susan Todd, Amelia Donkor and Susan Croft. We will be looking at barriers facing creatives and asking how we can work to progress towards equality both on and off stage.
The discussion will then be followed by a 1970s inspired social with a chance for us all to meet, network and celebrate our community – in all our glitter, grit and glory.
See this space on the Calm Down Dear festival site for more information.
