About Radical Rediscovery

“In 2024 Indhu Rubasingham is at the helm of the National Theatre and women writers and directors are everywhere,” says Susan Croft, an Associate Artist at London Performance Studios and curator of a new exhibition: Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992. “The change is huge, has been hard-won and should be celebrated! But we still need to work to keep hold of the progress we have made, and fight to extend parental rights and especially when funding is tight and the arts are disappearing from the state sector to fight for access to the arts for all women, as makers and as audiences.” With this laudable intent, the exhibition honours the early pioneers of women’s theatre in Britain. From the end of the 1960s until the early 1990s, radical performance made by women — including playwrights, directors, feminist collectives and experimental companies — gained significant profile but has often been neglected, with their history and archives overlooked. Radical Rediscovery aims to share objects from key theatre-makers, plus installations and revivals of significant shows. From the groundbreaking and outspoken feminist work of writer and film-maker Jane Arden in the 1960s to the challenging and uncompromising output of Sadista Sisters and Cunning Stunts, the exhibition situates their work within the feminist activism that developed after Arden’s Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven in 1969, through the first Women’s Theatre Festival in 1973, to Melissa Murray’s Ophelia (1979) and Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro (Theatre of Black Women, 1986). Focusing also on the richly visual and interdisciplinary work of performance-maker Geraldine Pilgrim and artist, writer and performer Natasha Morgan in the 1970s and 1980s, this exhibition acknowledges the larger history of women’s devised performance during this time. Croft, whose website Unfinished Histories is a mine of information about alternative theatre, has put together an excellent exhibition. It’s certainly timely to remember and honour those who embraced the social and political challenges and opportunities of second wave feminism — it’s their successes that laid the foundations for women theatre-makers of all kinds today.

© Aleks Sierz

• Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992 is at London Performance Studios from 8 November to 1 December.

Bernardine Evaristo Chiaroscuro Cunning Stunts devised theatre Ella Wilder exhibition experimental theatre feminism Geraldine Pilgrim Indhu Rubasingham Jackie Kay Jacqueline de Peza Jane Arden leftfield theatre London Performance Studios Melissa Murray Natasha Morgan National Theatre Ophelia political protest radical performance Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992 Sadista Sisters sexual liberation Susan Croft theatre history Theatre of Black Women Unfinished Histories Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven Vinny Dhillon women playwrights women's liberation Women’s Theatre Festival