This document is designed to accompany the Exhibition booklet for Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-92
We are in process of inserting links to further information on our website
Vitrine 1. BEGINNINGS OF A MOVEMENT: CONTEXT 1969-73 AND BEYOND
Why Miss World? pamphlet, 1970
Published by the WLM Office and illustration from inside.
The ‘Miss World’ Story by Eric Morley, Angley Books, 1967
First staged in 1951, at its height the contest attracted 24 million viewers on television
worldwide.
The Body Politic edited by Michelene Wandor, Stage 1, 1972
Plays by Women Vol. 1, 1982 edited by Michelene Wandor and Carry On Understudies:
Theatre and Sexual Politics by Michelene Wandor, 1986, both Eyre Methuen
Wandor both edited the papers of the first WLM conference, held in 1970 at Ruskin College,
Oxford, and documented the early women’s theatre movement in which she played a key
part as playwright and critic for Spare Rib, and in editing its first anthologies. Body Politic
contributors also included Mica Nava and Dinah Brooke who, like Wandor, also took part in
the first Women’s Theatre Festival. The cover drew on a poster design by Carole De Jongh
for the first International Women’s Day march in 1971.
Article from Spare Rib, August 1978
Written by director and academic Julie Holledge, who also became the first to do detailed
research on the Actresses Franchise League, the early 20th century campaign where
women performers used their public prominence to support the women’s suffrage
movement.
Flyer for The Amiable Courtship of Miz Venus and Wild Bill, by Pam Gems, 1973 and
Women’s Theatre Festival flyer
The play was performed as part of the Women’s Theatre Festival at the Almost Free Theatre.
Lent by Rose Bruford College, from the Clive Barker Archive.
Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, Calder and Boyars, 1971
Published two years after the production at the Arts Lab Drury Lane, the script records Jane
Arden’s text together with the action that evolved through rehearsals. It will be republished
for the first time by Montez Press in 2025.
Strike While the Iron is Hot, Journeyman Books, 1980
It included WTG’s first major show, My Mother Says I Never Should, which toured to schools
and explored young women’s experience of sex and their bodies.
Sink Songs by Michelene Wandor and Dinah Brooke, Feminist Books, 1986
Brooke’s Love Food and Wandor’s Mal de Mère were two of the plays produced at the first
Women’s Theatre Festival at the Almost Free Theatre in 1973.
Poster for Spare Tyre’s Women’s Complaint, 1981
Established in 1979 by Claire Chapwell, Harriet Powell and Katina Noble, Spare Tyre’s work
addressed issues of compulsive eating, women’s health, and self-image.
The Spare Tyre Songbook, published by feminist publisher Virago, 1986
Flyer for Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi by Pam Gems at the Mayfair Theatre, 1977
Gems’s play opened at the Hampstead Theatre in 1976 and was the first show from the
women’s movement to transfer to the West End.
Article on abortion rights from the publication Women’s Voice, November, 1978
Flyer for Dialogue Between a Prostitute and her Client by Dacia Maraini, 1980
Translated by Gillian Hanna, co-founder of the Monstrous Regiment company. The piece
uses a Brechtian form where the actress interrupts the action to debate questions around
sex with the audience.
Article from Spare Rib, June, 1977
Eileen Fairweather and Melissa Murray’s satire Bouncing Back with Benyon for Pirate
Jenny Team Two theatre company was part of a campaign responding to Tory MP William
Benyon’s 1977 attempt to restrict abortion rights.
Flyer for Masterpieces by Sarah Daniels, 1984
Originally performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1984, it addresses the sexual
objectification of women in pornography.
Flyer for Beryl and the Perils, undated
The company were performing at a benefit in New York alongside Spiderwoman theatre
whose vivid irreverent work explores representations of indigenous American women.
Poster for So You Don’t Like Being Raped, undated
Satirical poster on the attitudes of the legal system towards women and rape.
Spray It Loud by Jill Posener, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982
Posener gained fame for her photos documenting feminist graffiti that intervened in public
spaces like billboard advertising campaigns.
Flyer for Any Woman Can by Jill Posener, 1976
The first play by a woman to be produced by the company Gay Sweatshop
Flyer for Tissue by Louise Page, Writers Theatre Company, 1978
Directed at Birmingham Arts Lab by Nancy Diuguid with Kate Crutchley in the cast, it
explores the emotional complexities and problems caused by mastectomy.
Flyer for Dirt, Blood Group, 1983
Dirt was about pornography, subtitled ‘the sex of theatre and the theatre of sex.’
Production photos by Jill Posener.
Vitrine 2. BREAKING THROUGH
Leaflets for Attic Work Women Writers’ Workshop, undated
Led by Cheryl Robson, the group met to share work-in-progress and develop projects to
readings and full productions.
Women in the Arts: Notions of Equality, Arts Council, 1993
Despite campaigning groups working to put gender onto the Arts Council agenda, it has
taken until 2024 for the Arts Council to commit to setting up a Gender Equality Working
Group.
Leaflet for Women on the Fringe, Womanzone Bookshop, Edinburgh, 1986
Shows included plays by Marguerite Duras and feminist companies Sensible Footwear and
Trouble and Strife.
Leaflets for Women’s Playhouse Trust campaigns, c. 1984
Finborough’s Women’s Work leaflet, 1993
The season was billed as ‘the greatest celebration of new writing by women ever
undertaken by a producing venue in this country.’
CWTDA tongue-in-cheek job description for a woman theatre administrator, c. 1988
Flyer for Aphra Behn’s The Lucky Chance, 1984
Produced by WPT, Royal Court Theatre, 1984, with Harriet Walter and Jeremy Irons.
Women In Entertainment newsletters May 1982 and June/July, 1988
Woman Live events leaflet, 1982
Includes listings for venues and events from East Anglia to Devon and Cornwall to Wales
and Scotland, and on television and radio.
Festival programme for the Women’s Festival, 1977
Action Space Drill Hall, Chenies Street. According to Julie Parker, later Drill Hall artistic
director, it was effectively the first lesbian arts festival.
Cartoon by Ros Asquith from Time Out, April 1981
Reproduced with permission.
Conference Papers 1979-1981, CWTDA, 1981
Flyer for CWTDA conference Stage Whispers or Shouts, 1984
What Share of the Cake? Survey 1987, commissioned by the Women’s Playhouse Trust
Women Live programme, 1982
Designed by Janis Goodman.
Women Live festival flyer, May 1982
The festival took place across 38 venues in London alone hosting performances of music,
dance, film, poetry or theatre and visual arts, coordinated by a single paid worker Paula Brown,
working with a team of volunteers.
Women In Entertainment calendar, 1988
Produced by Acton Community Arts Workshop and WIE.
Leaflet for the Glass Ceiling 5, focusing on visible heroines and female protagonists,
undated
Sphinx’s 2019 version of the Bechdel test for women’s theatre, undated
The London Women’s Handbook, GLC Women’s Committee, 1986
Leaflet for CREE: Campaign for Real Equality in Equity, 1984
Membership recruitment leaflet for CWTDA, undated
Vitrine 3: REDISCOVERING WOMEN’S HISTORY
Poster for The Basset Table by Susannah Centlivre, 1998 and flyer for Love at a Loss by
Catherine Trotter, 1993
The rediscovery of the brilliant comedy of Restoration women playwrights included
productions by Wild Iris with Adjoa Andoh who played Lesbia in Love at a Loss, directed by Polly
Irvin.
Poster for an all-woman production of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, undated
Staged by Rose Bruford College students at Theatre Space, Covent Garden.
The Female Wits edited by Fidelis Morgan, Virago, 1981
Morgan’s was the first anthology of Restoration women playwrights and led to productions
such as Annie Castledine’s revival of Mary Pix’s play The Innocent Mistress at Derby
Playhouse in 1988.
Programme for Donna Giovanni by Jesusa Rodriguez, Compania Divas, 1987
International work by women offered important models to women in British theatre in the
1980s, LIFT festival.
Red Notes documentation of theatre workshops by Dario Fo and Franca Rame and
Pluto Press, 1981
Among key international influences in late 1970s and 80s was the commedia dell arte
influenced popular political theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame.
Of Whole Heart Cometh Hope, Age Exchange, 1983
Age Exchange Theatre company, directed by Pam Schweitzer, gathered oral histories from
specific communities, using them as the basis to script a show and publish a book which
would then be toured to those audiences. Unfinished Histories co-founder Jessica Higgs was part of the cast.
Flyer for Crux by April De Angelis, Paines Plough, 1989
De Angelis’s feminist history play explores the life of a medieval mystic.
Flyer for Mary Stuart by Dacia Maraini, Oval House, 1984
Flyer and script for The Gut Girls by Sarah Daniels, The Albany, Deptford, 1988.
Designed by the late Kate Owen who also designed The Albany auditorium. Daniels’ play
explores the lives of the women who worked in the cattle slaughterhouses of Victorian
Deptford.
Promptbook for Measure for Measure, Avon Touring Theatre, 1979
In director Sue Dunderdale’s feminist reworking Isabella’s brother Claudio became Claudia,
creating a striking difference between two sisters in terms of the sexual choices they make.
Lent by Sue Dunderdale.
Flyer for Werewolves by Teresa Lubkiewicz, 1978
Translated from Polish and directed by Helena Kaut Howson, Actors’ Soup Kitchen, Theatre
Space.
Script for Shakespeare’s Sister, translation by Gillian Hanna by Monstrous Regiment, 1980
Shakespeare’s Sister was originally produced by the French company Théâtre de l’Aquarium and draws on Virginia Woolf’s iconic myth of Shakespeare’s sister, the hidden female author.
Designs by Paul Dart and photos from Ophelia by Melissa Murray, Hormone Imbalance, 1979
Increasingly from the 1970s, women began to challenge the dominance of Shakespeare with their own versions of his work. In Melissa Murray’s Ophelia by lesbian theatre company Hormone Imbalance in 1979, Ophelia rejects a forced marriage with Hamlet and runs away with her maidservant Branwen. It will be published by Montez Press in 2025.
Lent by Paul Dart.
Women and Theatre newsletter, 1989 Susan Bassnett and Maggie Gale founded the newsletter to meet the growing need for information on research and teaching modules in the UK on feminist theatre, gender and the performing arts.
Flyer for Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby, Mrs Worthington’s Daughters, 1980
The 1912 play was first revived by Mrs Worthington’s Daughters and has since been ‘rediscovered’ many times: at what point does a classic play by a woman get acknowledged as a classic?
Poster for The Roaring Girl’s Hamlet, Sphinx, 1992
Sue Parrish’s production, presented the play as a show put on in the backroom of an inn by the celebrated thief Moll Cutpurse and her motley troupe, known for outraging society by dressing in masculine clothes and behaving as they chose.
Flyer for Mrs Worthington’s Daughters, 1979 triple bill The Oracle by Susannah Cibber (1752), In the Workhouse by Margaret Wynne Nevinson (1911) and JM Barrie’s The Twelve Pound Look (1914). The company was set up by Julie Holledge, Anne Engel and others to restage plays from women’s theatre history.
Photos of Ophelia by Melissa Murray, Hormone Imbalance,, 1979
According to set costume and lighting designer Paul Dart: ‘I designed the show at the Drill Hall…on a shoestring – £50 for the complete show…and as the theme for the show was Elizabethan futuristic I made all the costumes from scratch, buying the fabrics from a surplus stock wholesaler in East End and using furniture from my front room and the tiled floor created using gaffer tape. All the costumes had cotton taped ties as I couldn’t afford buttons or zips. These were the challenges a designer faced trying to create shows on such tight budgets, but have resulted in innovative ways of working that led to a new visual vocabulary.’
Lent by Paul Dart.
Programme for Playhouse Creatures by April De Angelis, Sphinx, 1993
De Angelis’s classic exploration of 17th-century actresses on their admission to the public stage after the Restoration of Charles II was directed by Sue Parrish.
Vitrine 4. FEMALE TROUBLE: WOMEN REBELS
Beryl and the Perils
Founded by Claudia Boulton, Christine Ellerbeck, Didi Hopkins and Lauren Jana Marks,
who met after director Michele Frankel put an ad in Time Out, the group devised their work,
drawing on a cartoon-style inspired by The Beano comic’s images devising a first show
about sex called Is Dennis Really the Menace? (1978). Hopkins and Boulton continued to
work together over six shows with others.
Poster for Beryl and the Perils in Nuts, 1979
Theatre Space and tour, 1979. Designed by Nicola Lane. The play explored women and
mental health.
A selection of photos of the company in performance, by Mark Usher or unknown
photographers.
Article on Beryl and the Perils in the Islington Gutter Press, a socialist local newspaper,
May 1979
Costume designs by Didi Hopkins for Nuts, 1979
Little Women
Founded in 1982 by Debbie Shewell and Katrina Duncan, with the aim of challenging the
roles traditionally given to women on and off the stage, the company was GLC funded.
Programme for Ad/vent by Rosie Cullen, directed by Sue Sanders, 1985
Trafford Tanzi by Clare Luckham, with photos by Nobby Clark, Quartet Books, 1983
Souvenir edition of the hugely successful comedy which pitted a woman in a wrestling ring
in bout against her father, her rival Platinum Sue and her husband.
Clean Break
Set up by ex-prisoners, Jenny Hicks and Jacqueline Holborough created plays by, with and
about women in the criminal justice system. It continues to operate today.
Poster for Avenues by Caroline Needs, Alison Tilly and Jacki Holborough, 1981
The play explored three women’s attempts to cope with institutionalized life.
Programme for Head-Rot Holiday by Sarah Daniels, 1992
Directed by Paulette Randall, Clean Break. The show was based around the experience of
women in Special Hospitals and Secure Psychiatric Units.
Hardware Company
Poster for Everywoman, 1981. Described as exploring ‘the diversity and complexity of a
woman through the various stages of her life.’
Sensible Footwear
Described as brash and talented, the company were formed as part of Inter-Action in 1981,
to share the experience of young women in employment and in unemployment.
Promotional badges
Flyer for Out of Control, c. 1982
A show exploring women’s control by men.
Company photo, Edinburgh, 1982
L to R: Anna Birch, Alex Dallas Wendy Vousden, Alison Field in front. Photo: Putney Helm.
The original, not very sensible, footwear that inspired the name.
Lent by Anna Birch.
Sadista Sisters
Founded in 1974, the company were physical, visual, eclectic, savage, funny, tender and
populist, a theatre company and a band, the drew on range of styles from performance art
to punk.
Flyer for Red Door Without a Bolt by Jude Alderson, 1981
The show was described as ‘a bleak modern fable with ‘…violent lyrics, crude actors, filthy
humour and sex.’
Spin/Stir
Formed in 1990 by Ness Lee and Joelle Taylor, the company used physical theatre to explore
the monstrous feminine and address topics including sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Writer Taylor has gone on to critical acclaim as a novelist and T.S Eliot prize-winning poet for
C*nto.
Promotional postcard for Angels with Dirty Fingernails
The image of Ness Lee shaving Joelle Taylor references a famous image of Cheryl Crawford
shaving k.d. lang.
Whorror Stories by Joelle Taylor
Promotional postcard and photo of Ness Lee in a show described as ‘a tarantella of rage and
desire,’ drawing on their signature style of ‘social surrealism.’
Extraordinary Productions
Poster for Female Trouble by Bryony Lavery, Theatre Space, directed by Caroline Eves, 1981.
Lavery’s cabaret show was devised to give women a good night out. Late work became
fiercer, darker, more glamorous.
Clapperclaw
The company was a four-woman music and theatre cabaret group, founded by Rif Pyke,
who performed in pubs and clubs, theatres and parties and senior citizens clubs. Their work
included the epic Ben Her. Promotional poster and flyer.
GraceGraceGrace explore gen-age, LADA, 2019
The book grew out of a 2015 event called Old Dears to explore the performance of aging and
gender. Womxn performers, many with careers dating back to the 1970s and 80s, created
works in response to the changing female body.
Vitrine 5. ACTIVISM AND EDUCATION
Poster for Danger! Women at Work by Counteract, 1980
The show explored the life-cycle of women workers and was based on an incident in a
Hackney factory where 1200 women were laid off at 24-hours’ notice.
Red Rag Spring, 1977
One of the key socialist feminist magazines from the early women’s movement.
Spare Rib, August, 1981
Even feminist theatre companies could be split over workers’ rights – in 1981, controversy
embroiled Beryl and the Perils over their decision to ask two pregnant women to leave.
Time Out cover featuring Women’s Theatre Group in Work to Role, 1976
Leaflet for Not By Bread Alone by Margaret Pine, 1986
A community play about women in the miners’ strike, staged in Easington, 1986.
Leaflet for Wandsworth Women’s Working Lives , 1988
A project that started in 1987 to gather memories of working women in the borough to
create a book, a video and That Summer in Summerstown, a community play by Jo Stanley.
Leaflet for a season of women writers in the Northern Arts region, 1990
Featuring Karen Hope, Taryn Storey and Kitty Fitzgerald.
Poster for Cut and Thrust cabaret, 1983
One of several highly popular political cabarets staged at the Drill Hall by Australian writer
and chanteuse Robyn Archer.
Programme and flyer for Here We Go! a Benefit for Women in Mining Communities at
the Piccadilly Theatre, 1984.
Season leaflet for Contact Theatre, Manchester, 1990
Featuring an adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel Meridian by Cindy Artiste, directed by
Paulette Randall.
Flyer for Sistershow, Bristol c. 1973
Flyer for Getting Through by Nona Shepphard, 1985
The play had music by Helen Glavin, additional lyrics by Bryony Lavery, Theatre Centre
Women’s Company, 1985. The play looked at gender-based issues, self-expression and
communications. It toured to schools, including in the US and Canada.
Lent by Rose Bruford College.
Company photo and leaflet for Spreading Our Wings by Sandra Yaw, Theatre Centre
Mixed Company, 1989
Lent by Rose Bruford College.
Flyer for When the Bough Breaks devised by Theatre Centre Women’s Company,
designed by Kate Owen, 1988.
Staged as part of their In Transit season, the play dealt with
the experience of migration and ‘birthright.’
Lent by Rose Bruford College.
Teendreams by Susan Todd and David Edgar, Monstrous Regiment, 1979
L to R: Mary McCusker, Chris Bowler. The play looked at the impact of 10 years of the
women’s movement on a schoolteacher and two of her students.
Poster for Pax by Deborah Levy, Women’s Theatre Group, directed by Anna Furse and
Lily Susan Todd, 1985
The play drew on myth and music to examine the centrality of war and the nuclear maze in
our culture Levy has gone on to become an acclaimed and Booker-prize shortlisted novelist.
Inter-Action’s Almost-Free Theatre staged The Last Anti-Nuclear Festival in 1979
Photo: Bob Chase.
Sweetie Pie by Bolton Octagon Theatre in Education company, Methuen, 1975
Originally developed in 1972, this was one of the first TIE programmes to address gender in
society.
Flyer for Vampirella by Angela Carter, Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 1986
Carter’s play was performed with non-traditional. Josette Bushell-Mingo played the Hero in
one of her earliest professional roles.
Dead Proud: from Second Wave Young Women Playwrights eds. Ann Considine and
Robyn Slovo, The Women’s Press, 1987
A selection of scripts and play extracts were published in the young peoples’ list Livewire.
Glenda Jackson (pictured) was patron to the project.
Poster for an action at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, 1982
Many of these actions were highly theatrical.
The Offshore Island by Marghanita Laski, May Fair Books, 1961
Originally produced on television in 1959, Laski’s play was directed for stage in the 1980s by
Michele Frankel in response to the nuclear threat.
Leaflets and programme for Second Wave Young Women Writers’ Festival, 1986 and
1987
Based at Second Wave Young Women’s Arts Project at the Albany Empire the festival aimed
especially to encourage young women in working-class Deptford to tell their stories through
theatre.
Season leaflet for Oval House, 1985
Includes Blood Group’s production of the peace play Clam: A Play for Peace by Deborah
Levy with Mine Kaylan and Andrzej Borkowski.
Leaflet for Peace Play Festival 1985
One of several initiatives supported by the Theatre Writers’ Union.
Vitrine 6. THE DEMAND FOR DIVERSITY – THE GLOBAL MAJORITY
Flyer for You Strike the Woman, You Strike the Rock devised by Vusiszwe Players, LIFT,
1987
Wenzani ‘What are You Doing?’ devised by Dorcas Faku and Diana Taylor, Polyptoton
and West Six Theatre Company, 1984
Directed by Adele Saleem, the two-woman play depicted the political struggle in South Africa humour, pain and outrage through a mosaic of song, dance, poetry and dialogue.
Poster for Chandralekha by Amrit Wilson, Sphinx Theatre, 1994
Wilson, author of Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain, was the first Asian writer to be
staged by Sphinx.
Poster for Mitzi Wildebeest: First Lady of the Veldt by Elaine Loudon, directed by Kate
Crutchley, 1980s
Mitzi Wildebeest was the horrifying Afrikaaner matron played by white South African actor
and singer Loudon in her biting political satire of racist thinking under apartheid.
Issue of Black Arts in London, June-July, 1986
BAIL, with the journal Artrage, was one of two key publications of the Minority Arts Advisory
Service (MAAS) set up following Naseem Khan’s 1976 report The Arts Britain Ignores, helping to document work, support and network Black artists across the arts.
Programme for Theatre Centre’s Reality Check, 1990s
Like Authentic Voices, Reality Check was an initiative to develop the work of young Asian
women writers in Tower Hamlets.
Flyer for The Pirate Princess by Barbara Glouden, Black Theatre Forum, Arts Theatre,
1986
Jamaican writer Glouden also had a further pantomime Flash Trash, staged in London in
1986
Leaflets for Kali seasons of new Asian women playwrights, 2013 and 2018
Have You Seen Zandile? by Gcina Mhlophe with Maralin Vanrenen and Thembi Mtshali,
Heinemann, 1988
The play explores Mhlope’s childhood when she was kidnapped from her devoted grandmother in Durban, and taken to live with her mother in the harsh, rural Transkei.
Flyer for Right of Way, Asian Women Writers Collective and Tara Arts, undated.
Leaflet for Zebra Crossings, Talawa, 1996
This was an initiative set up by the company to support the development of writers in new
forms including performance poetry and scat jazz.
Programme for Many Voices, One Chant devised and directed by Olusola Oyeleye, Battersea Arts Centre, 1987
The piece, drawing on African song, was developed by Oyeleye as one of the winners of the
BP Young Directors Festival.
Spare Rib article, October 1982 and flyer for Motherland, Oval House, 1982
Developed by Elyse Dodgson and Marcia Smith with young women from Vauxhall Manor
School the piece was based on oral history interviews with their mothers who had come
over as part of the Windrush generation.
Programme for Subah O Shaam by Jyoti Patel and Jez Simons, Derby Playhouse, 1990
The play mixed comedy and serious issues during one day in the life of an Indian-run local
shop.
Programme for 48 Minutes for Palestine by Mojisola Adebayo, Ashtar Theatre, 2010
Developed by writer and teacher Adebayo with Ashtar, originally established in Jerusalem in
1991 to create theatre training for Palestinians.
Oval House leaflet Autumn 1991 featuring Ave Afrika by Marianne Jean Baptiste,
Michele Warsama and comedians Felicity Ethnic and Jessica Minority
Oval was a key space in encouraging the development of young Black women writers and
performers from the 1980s, a role continued in its new incarnation as Brixtonhouse.
Poster for Two Trains Running by August Wilson, directed by Paulette Randall, Tricycle
Theatre, 1996
Randall’s career as a director on stage and television, especially recognised for her productions of Wilson, grew from her involvement as co-founder of Theatre of Black Women.
Programme for Patterns Barbara Burford, Changing Women, Oval House, 1985
Devised by a multicultural group of women and scripted by poet Burford, the piece was set
among the women working in a closed-down garment factory and drew on Greek myths to
evoke their lives.
Brickbats and Bouquets: Black woman’s critique literature, theatre, film by Akua Rugg,
Race Today, 1984
Rugg was, with Naseem Khan, one of the first Black or Asian women to publish theatre criticism in the UK.
Flyer for Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine by Pat Cumper, Groundwork Theatre
Company, Almeida, 1989
Performed by Honor Ford-Smith and Carol Laws, key members of Sistren, Jamaican women’s company.
Hand-out for Black women writers’ workshops
Led by Winsome Pinnock, Royal Court and Women’s Playhouse Trust.
Flyer for Leave Taking by Winsome Pinnock, Lyric Hammersmith, 1986
Pinnock has gone on to win wide recognition as a playwright, especially for Rockets and
Blue Lights (2019). Her early play The Wind of Change will be published by Montez Press in
2025.
Flyers and programme for In Nobody’s Backyard (1985) and Success or Failure? (1988)
by Gloria Hamilton, Umoja Theatre Company
Founded in Camberwell by Guyanan writer director Hamilton and actor Alex (AJ) Simon, the
company was based at a local church hall, now the Blue Elephant Theatre and work often
focused on Caribbean politics and anti-colonialist struggle.
The Plot, issue 2, 1986
‘Where Do Black Women Fit In?…’ Interview by Susan Croft with Theatre of Black Women
about their new show by Jackie Kay, the first play about Black lesbian experience.
Poster for Picture Palace by Winsome Pinnock, Women’s Theatre Group, 1986
Set among a group of cinema employees, the play examines the role of fantasy and reality in
their lives, as they interact with the images of the actresses on the Big Screen.
Flyer for Pyeyucca by Theatre of Black Women, 1984, designed by Ingrid Pollard and
Lenthall Road Workshop, Hackney
Pyeyucca was scripted by Bernardine Evaristo who has gone on to achieve major success as
a novelist, especially with her Booker prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other, 2019.
Photo: Pyeyucca by Theatre of Black Women, Bernardine Evaristo and Patricia Hilaire,
1984.
The show explored black women and self-image and how black women are marked by their
stereotypical portrayal in the media.
Vitrine 7: THE DEMAND FOR INCLUSION: DISABILITY AND LESBIAN VISIBILITY
Poster for Her Aching Heart by Bryony Lavery, Women’s Theatre Group,1990
Lavery’s play was a wickedly funny lesbian parody of the Gothic romances of Daphne Du
Maurier, Georgette Heyer et al and of contemporary women’s attraction to their stereotypes.
Poster for Mama’s Gone a Hunting by Tasha Fairbanks, Siren Theatre, 1980
Siren grew out of the Brighton-based band Devil’s Dykes becoming a theatre company and
lesbian-feminist band.
Programme for From the Divine… by Tasha Fairbanks, Siren, 1984
An intergalactic court decide whether women should leave planet Earth.
Flyer for Aid Thy Neighbour by Michelene Wandor, directed by Kate Crutchley for the
Women’s Project, 1978
Wandor’s comedy at the New End Theatre explored a lesbian and a straight couple’s experience of artificial insemination by donor.
Flyer for Les Autres by Sarah McNair, Hard Corps, Oval House, 1986
Set in Paris in the fin-de-siècle lesbian circle of Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks and Dolly
Wilde.
Flyer for Fried or Boiled by Dorothy Talk, 1990
The company formed in the 1990s by Jude Winter and Hilary Ramsden after Siren folded.
Flyer for A Fine Undertaking by Berta Freistadt, No Boundaries Theatre, 1984
The play was a farce set in a lesbian-run funeral parlour.
Flyer for The Adventures of Robyn Hood by Nona Shepphard, Drill Hall, 1988
From 1987 when they staged Cheryl Moch’s Cinderella, the Drill Hall’s lesbian pantos became a fixture in the calendar, gleefully foregrounding the inherent gender confusion of the
genre.
Poster and flyer for Patience and Sarah, directed by Kate Crutchley, Cockpit and Oval
House 1983
Adapted from Isobel Miller’s novel by Joyce Halliday, with music by y Shaz Nassauer. Charting
the growing love between two pioneer women in 19th century America, its central roles were
performed by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver of Split Britches theatre company.
Leaflet for The General Will community season including Les Be Friends 1976
The agit-prop company in Bradford re-formed in 1976 to create work with groups from the
local community, especially working-class lesbians and gay men.
Lent by Rose Bruford College.
Flyer for Every Bit of It by Jackie Kay, Women’s Theatre Group, 1992
Two women one deaf, take the blues train out of town in pursuit of Bessie Smith.
Postcard for Peeling by Kaite O’Reilly, Graeae, 2002
The Trojan Women to foreground the lives of d/Deaf and differently abled women.
Flyer for Brooklyn E5 by Nicole Freni, 1987. ‘Described as a lesbian multi-ethnic odyssey’.
Leaflet for Oval House programme Jan/Feb 1983
Featuring a cover sketch promoting US lesbian playwright Jane Chambers’s A Late Snow,
directed by Kate Crutchley.
Flyer for An Evening with Katie’s Gang by Clare Summerskill, Oval House, 1990s
Summerskill has gone on to create numerous shows, especially work exploring lesbian and
gay oral histories, including Gateway to Heaven (2019) and Rights of Passage (2016), stories
of LGBTQ asylum seekers.
Flyers for Clare Dowie’s Leaking from Every Orifice, 1994 and Why Is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?, 1991
Dowie’s stand-up theatre explores non-binary identities like their own and the prison of sexual, gender and behavioural stereotypes. In Leaking they vividly recount the experience of a lesbian who gets accidentally pregnant by a gay man.
Programme for Wyre’s Cross by Masters and Griffiths, Mrs Worthington’s Daughters’
Daughters, 1982.
The show was a four-part soap opera with live ads performed over several nights.
Poster for A Night in November by Marie Jones, 2000
A one-man show produced by the Northern Irish women’s company Dubbeljoint, set up with
director Pam Brighton. Jones developed as a writer in the 1980s as one of the four women of
Belfast-based Charabanc Theatre Company.
Poster for Joyriders by Christina Reid, Paines Plough, 1986
Young people from Belfast’s notorious Divis flats undergo a Youth Training programme.
Poster for The Revenge of the Graeae, 1995
This name of this festival of Disabled women writers references the three women of classical
mythology who shared just one eye and one tooth, after which the company is named.
Poster for Hound by Maria Oshodi, directed by Ewen Marshall, Graeae, 1992
Oshodi’s play was based on her interviews with twenty blind and visually impaired people,
and explores the experience of blind people undergoing guide dog training.
Flyer and photo for A Private View by Tasha Fairbanks, Graeae, 1987
Directed by Anna Furse and focused on women painters, this was the company’s first women’s project. The cast included Jenny Sealey, later to become the company’s Artistic Director.
Copies of Disability Arts in London, 1987 and 1993
Vitrine 8 FINDING NEW FORMS: EXPERIMENTAL WORK
Poster for Wherehouse La MaMa’s Hilton Keen Blow Your Chances Top of the Heap
Golden Personality Show of the Week; Groupjuice and Little Mother, c1969
Founded by Beth Porter the company was the London offshoot of Ellen Stewart’s New York-based La MaMa and premiered much of their work at Jim Haynes’ Arts Lab Drury Lane.
Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, Pluto Press, 1979
Churchill’s play experiments with time, cross-gender casting in its exploration of sexual
and gender politics. Pluto Press published Catherine Itzin’s series of key alternative theatre
texts.
Programme for Midday Sun, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1984
The work was a collaboration between Caryl Churchill, Geraldine Pilgrim, and Pete Brooks,
commissioned for the ICA by John Ashford, a key individual in supporting experimental work
in the 1980s.
Flyer and artwork for the poster for Minutes by Hesitate and Demonstrate, 1979. Photo:
Michael Bennett.
Set in a ruined house, Minutes evokes a shabby post-war world where women struggle to
keep up appearances and are haunted by unfulfilled desires in Hesitate and Demonstrate’s
haunting surreal world. The company was founded by Geraldine Pilgrim and Janet Goddard
who met at Leeds Arts School. The performance scenario will be published by Montez
Press, 2025.
Original sketch by Geraldine Pilgrim for the set of Minutes, 1979
The Magdalena newsletter
Formed in Cardiff by Jill Greenhalgh in 1986,the Magdalena grew to become a major network of women in physical and laboratory theatre, which continues outside the UK.
Leaflets for Magdalena Project gatherings 1986-89 and The Way of the Magdalena and The Open Page, 2007
Leaflet featuring Hesitate and Demonstrate at Oval House, 1978
Oval House offered a key early space for experiment where numerous companies developed
their work including Horrid Things, 1978. The company then moved on to the ICA.
Leaflet for Scars, Hesitate and Demonstrate, ICA, 1979
The piece took the Brontës as point of departure for a dream sequence of images and actions.
Two Hotels by Geraldine Pilgrim, 2000
Co-founder of Hesitate and Demonstrate, Pilgrim has gone on to create site-specific work in
numerous locations including the Midland Grand Hotels at Morecambe Bay and St Pancras
Station, working with her company Corridor, photographed by Sheila Burnett.
Flyer for The Uses of Enchantment by Heather Ackroyd, 1989
Ackroyd, like Claire MacDonald, was one of several innovative women performance makers
to come out of Leeds-based Impact Theatre Cooperative. Her work is centrally focused on
environmental issues. She is co-founder of Culture Declares Emergency.
Flyer for Scarlet Theatre’s On Air, 1993
The company was formerly named Scarlet Harlets and continued their innovative physical
and visual style.
Programme for Room by Natasha Morgan, Royal Court, 1981
Room was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Morgan’s own struggle for
creative space. The script will be published for the first time by Montez Press, 2025.
Programme for Mourning Song by Black Mime Theatre’s Women’s Troop, 1997
Set up in 1984, the company operated till 1998 with some shows mixed, some gender-specific, under Artistic Director Denise Wong. Mourning Song explored the rites of death and grieving.
Leaflets for Oval House in the 1980s
Includes those for Women Live, 1982.
Handout for Bobby Baker’s Art Supermarkets, ICA, 1978 and postcard for Baker’s Cook
Dems, 1990
Photo by Andrew Whittuck
Much experimental performance in the period carved out new areas of practice which became encompassed as Live Art. Baker’s work confronts the spaces and rituals of domesticity.
Flyers for Seven Year Bad Luck by Second Nature, Oval House, 1985
The show, by Zena Dilke and Lorna Marshall, explored image, perception and self-distortion.
Flyers for Anna Griffin’s Almost Persuaded, ICA, 1987 and Ariadne, Gloria, 1989
Griffin initially created solo shows before moving on to work in film and television.
Programme for Annie Griffin and Laura Ford’s The Deadly Grove, ICA, 1988
The piece was a response to the classical ballet Giselle and its chorus of ‘Wilis’ the ghostly
spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers.
Flyer for Duet by Intimate Strangers, Josephine Foster and Melanie Thompson, 1992
Intimate Strangers, formed in 1983, was one of many companies to emerge from Dartington.
Duet explored the meeting place between two women and two cultures.
Programme for Moon by Annie Stainer, 1977
Stainer, with Nola Rae, was one of the key British women mime artists from the 1970s onwards.
Booking notes for The Sale of the Demonic Women by Zofia Kalinska and flyer featuring
the show, 1990
Kalinska’s second show developed in Britain was produced by Tanya Myers of Nottingham-based Meeting Ground Theatre whose theatre aimed to explore the ‘politics of the imagination.’
Performance Magazine, Issue 27 Dec/Jan 1984, featuring performance artist Silvia Ziranek
The magazine ran from 1979 to 1992 and was one of the key spaces exploring experimental
cross art-form work at the time.