This timely exhibition at London Performance Studios highlights an influential period of 20th century theatre history. 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, their history and archives overlooked.
Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992 will share artefacts from key theatre makers, installations will be created and pivotal performances will be revisited.
The exhibition is curated by London Performance Studios Associate Artist Dr Susan Croft, whose ongoing project Unfinished Histories is dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of Alternative Theatre in Britain from the 1960s to the early 90s.
Radical Rediscovery: Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992 explores far reaching social changes that impacted the arts and set the stage for an explosion of female voices. Focusing on the richly visual and interdisciplinary work of artist and performance maker Geraldine Pilgrim and artist, writer and performer Natasha Morgan in the 1970s and 80s, this exhibition also looks at the larger history of women’s devised performance during this time and at the struggles of women directors and playwrights to gain acceptance and move towards equality.
From the groundbreaking and outspoken feminist work of writer and film-maker Jane Arden in the1960s to the challenging and uncompromising output of Sadista Sisters and Cunning Stunts, this exhibition contextualises their work within the growing emergence of feminist performance that grew from Arden’s Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven, through the first Women’s Theatre Festival in Britain in 1973, to gradually build real and increasingly intersectional change within theatre.
Unfinished Histories was founded in 2006 by Dr Susan Croft and Jessica Higgs and later established as an independent organisation in 2012. Through extensive interviews and archival work, Unfinished Histories highlights the pioneering contributions of marginalised communities, including Black, Asian, disabled, and LGBTQ+ communities, women and other politically engaged theatre groups, ensuring their transformative legacy is recognised and remembered.
Exhibition events also include a Radical Rediscovery Symposium on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 November. Dr Susan Croft says: “In November over two days we will bring together women theatre-makers across the generations to look at our history, where we stand now and whose shoulders we are standing on, what was gained then and what has been lost, how we can hold onto our history, and learn from the past and how we can explore, share, revisit some of the amazing work that has been achieved and set an agenda for the future”.
London Performance Studios, Penarth Street, London SE15 1TR from November 8 – December 1, 2024, Thursday to Sunday 12-5pm
www.londonperformancestudios.com/radical-rediscovery-feminist-theatre-in-britain-1969-1992
