Unfinished Histories
Monday, May 5th, 2008Sunday April 27, 2008 turned out to be a bit of a red letter day. At The Drill Hall in Chenies Street, temporarily rescued from last year’s Arts Council cull, women theatre artists, many of whom played the Drill Hall as performers, gathered to remember some of the good times and celebrate what many now believe to have been a golden era. As Jessica Higgs, one of the prime movers of the event, put it: `if only these walls could speak’.
It all started two years ago. In the now defunct Theatre Museum in Covent Garden, theatre archivist Susan Croft, together with Angie Milan, presented an evening seminar of women theatre artists from the early days of the 1970s and ‘80s women’s movement [visit the Theatrevoice archive to hear the discussion]. Amongst the panel guests were Gillian Hanna (founder member of Monstrous Regiment), Michele Frankel (of Beryl and the Perils) and Susie Orbach whose book, Fat is a Feminist Issue inspired the founding of theatre company, Spare Tyre, still going today.
In the audience on that day was Jessica Higgs, director and voice coach. Higgs had long nursed the desire to record the companies, collective working methods and people involved in that period, seen now as the start of today’s fringe and alternative theatre movement. She and Croft, former Theatre Museum curator and author of …She Also Wrote Plays (Faber & Faber) decided to join forces. Their ambition: to record as many practitioners from the women’s companies and alternative theatre groups as they could before their work and the ideas that fired these trailblazers disappeared from history.
History, as we know, so often, belongs to the victors. When it comes to theatre history, it can all too easily belong to the big battalions, those who have archives and archivists conveniently on the payroll. As we’ve seen from recent publications, it’s possible to record the modern history of British theatre without recourse or reference to this work leading to a sadly partial and only half told portrait of our theatre history.
One of the striking features of those hectic years of the late 60s, 70s and early 80s is just how little was `collected’ in any substantial form. Posters, programmes, production photos, yes; but scripts and a sense of what those performances were about or the process that brought them together – well, we only have those who were there to describe it for us. Plus, it has to be said, reviewers. Without the supportive encouragement of such Time Out theatre critics as Ann McFerran, Dusty Hughes, John Ashford, Naseem Khan and later Ros Asquith, much of this highly influential work would never have found its way into the public domain, never mind its audience.
Sunday’s event then saw the launch of the first stage of Croft and Higgs’ endeavours – the handing over of 14 video and audio interviews to the V&A Theatre Collections and National Sound Archives where they will be available to students, researchers and theatre practitioners. A set will also be placed in the Bristol University Theatre Collection. A splendid exhibition of posters, programmes, photos and memorabilia was also mounted by Croft with the help of students from the Rose Bruford College who are directly supporting the work. Later there was a showing of video highlights of some of the interviews followed by a panel discussion with Lily Susan Todd, Eileen Pollock, Indhu Rubasingham and Soho’s current artistic director, Lisa Goldman discussing the relationship between women’s work then and now. It brought impassioned responses from the floor from some of the `old warriors’, confirming the energy and commitment still out there. And if some of the frustrations with, for example, roles for women and working practises that led Todd and Pollock’s generation to set up their own companies have eased – there are many more women directors now than then – as Rubasingham pointed out, there is a distinct inequality between the number of plays by men and the number being staged by female writers. Plus ca change, plus il reste la meme!
So plenty of criticism of where we are today. But the main spirit of the afternoon belonged overwhelmingly to one of celebration and a rekindling of the sense of adventure and fun that so defined the period and which it is impossible now to replicate. If there is one thing the younger `feminists’ now envy of their predecessors, it is, they said, that sense of shared collective view, of being part of a movement larger than any one individual. Of the older generation, few knew exactly what it was they were aiming for. They were groping towards an identity of themselves as female artists. And as Todd - part of the group who demonstrated at one of the Miss World contests in the 1970s with bulbs hidden at strategic points on their bodies that would suddenly `flash’ on and off – reported, they were often fearful.
The next stage of Unfinished Histories will hopefully see a further block of interviews of artists from more alternative companies if Croft and Higgs can raise the money (about £30k in all). On May 9, Oval House will be hosting a celebration of its own history and its founding `father’, Peter Oliver, who died at the end of last year in Canada. Amongst the companies who went through the `Oval House’ experience and were the recipients of Oliver’s enthusiasm and encouragement are Welfare State, Incubus, Foco Novo, Hesitate and Demonstrate, Forkbeard Fantasy, IOU, The People Show and the Pip Simmons Theatre Group. Individuals such as Pierce Brosnan, Tim Roth and Steven Berkoff also took their first halting steps there. The event will also include an interview with director Kate Crutchley whose period as the Oval’s artistic director in the 80s was distinctive for her championing of women’s work.
For those who would like more information about Susan Croft, please go to this link; for information on Jessica Higgs’ company, In Tandem TC through whom the interviews have been organised, contact Intantc@aol.com. An audio CD of edited highlights of the first 14 interviews is now available from Intantc@aol.com. Those already interviewed are:
Jude Alderson, Sheila Allen, Kate Crutchley, Anne Engel, Michele Frankel, Bryony Lavery, Natasha Morgan, Ruth Mackenzie, Julie Parker, Eileen Pollock, Jacqueline Rudet, Adele Salem, Lily Susan Todd, Michelene Wandor.