Preview, Women in the Arts Festival

Three-day event in London to showcase female talent.

From 16-18 December the Women in the Arts festival will bring together women producers, writers, actors, poets, musicians, comedians, artists and directors to foster collaboration, build mutual support and to examine how we can help ourselves and each other to develop our work.

The festival, at the Tristan Bates Theatre, in London, will showcase 40 projects including staged readings, performances, showreels and arts installations.

Among them, performances of Request Programme, from the Siris Original Theatre Company of Sweden, starring Cecilia Nilsson and directed by Hedvig Claesson.

The storyline? Miss Rasch loves to listen to a radio show where people request music for their loved ones, near or far away. But who loves Miss Rasch?

Director Holly Maples will revive Rosanna Lowe's adaptation of the 1866 novel 'Madame Bovary' by French author Gustave Flaubert, with a rehearsed reading from Sarah Lawrie.

Both Maples and Lawrie said they were excited about revisiting and reworking this whirlwind of a script, which has such a well-drawn, complex female character, Emma, at its core.

Lowe writes, “Emma is far from a feminist character, but in her riding boots she does kick against the constraints of marriage and motherhood.

“She holds the reins at various points in the story, even if the story eventually carries her off to an ugly end which is, like her, messy, complicated, realistic.”

And there will be a performance of 'Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?' by Claire Dowie, a comedy about sexual stereotyping, well, ‘a fierce and subversive monologue about gender expectations and stereotypes, spoken by someone who doesn’t want to be a ‘girl’, doesn’t want to wear skirts, [but] does want to be John Lennon.

'What begins as frustration at the impracticality of the compulsory school skirt becomes an articulate and passionate invective against obligatory femininity.’

It was given SIX stars by the Edinburgh Evening News, which described it as “one of Fringe 2013 hidden gems ... hilarious, angry, empowering, political, confused, tragic, subversive but most of all, human ... 

Tour de force performances are few and far between. In this one-hour piece Dowie gives just that.”

Julie Ross will be performing her one-woman show 'Don't Ask the Lady...!', celebrating female songwriters of the 20th century, and Funbags Festive Frolics, from Funny Women Award semi-finalists Gemma 

Layton, Jo Burke and Jacqui Curran, will add a seasonal twist with a daft, dark, fast-paced mix of sketches, comedy songs and silliness.

The Women in the Arts Festival is co-produced by the So and So Arts Club, which is 'dedicated to building an artistic community through a series of interactive events', the The Actor's Centre and the Tristan Bates Theatre.

For details, keep an eye on their website. To purchase tickets, or reserve tickets for free but 'ticketed' events, click here.

Story published in Women's Views on News, December 6, 2013