Feminist Theatre in Britain 1969-1992 Exhibition Comes to London Performance Studios

A timely exhibition at London Performance Studios will highlight 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.

Dr Susan Croft says: “Back in the 1960s and 70s, theatre work by and about women was very hard to find. Directors and playwrights were assumed to be male, most roles, especially good ones, were for men, most companies male dominated. With the growth of second wave feminism, in late1973, a group of women put on the first Women’s Theatre Festival at the Almost Free Theatre in Soho. They began a collective conversation about how to bring about change, asking questions about their marginalisation, demanding space, funding, opportunities and challenging prejudices. They started to get together in groups to make work about their experience and tour it to new audiences across the country, from mothers’ groups to union members. Monstrous Regiment, Bloomers and other groups set up in the 70s were joined in the 80s by Siren, Theatre of Black Women, Munirah, Hard Corps, Blood Group and others, making work about race, sexuality, social exclusion, while experimenting with new vocabularies and forms. Feminist organisations began to demand larger theatres employ more women directors and that women writers be commissioned, as well as asking for seats on Boards, and access to training… 

In 2024 Indhu Rubasingham is at the helm of The National Theatre and women writers and directors are everywhere. 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. This exhibition honours the campaigns for change of that earlier generation and celebrates the innovative work they produced”. 

In addition to the exhibition, Montez Press launch Radical Rediscoveries on November 19 at London Performance Studios. Radical Rediscoveries is a new publication with an introduction by Dr Susan Croft, making available key rare and unpublished scripts from the period including early multimedia work and scenarios for experimental performance, addressing women’s rage and pain and exclusion from cultural space, Ophelia by Melissa Murray (1979) - a lesbian reworking of Hamlet, Go West, Young Woman! by Pam Gems (1974) a feminist exploration of the mythologies of the wild west and The Wind of Change by Winsome Pinnock (1987) a Windrush play on the experience of a Jamaican nurse in 1960s Britain. Vagina Rex & The Gas Oven by Jane Arden (1969), Minutes by Hesitate and Demonstrate (1978) and Room by Natasha Morgan (1981) are also included.

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”. Further details including timings to be announced.

Dr Susan Croft’s Associate Artist residency at London Performance Studios includes Fifty Years Of The Fight For Inclusion (FYFFI) – a three-year project initiated to mark the fifty-year anniversaries of three key moments in the history of theatre including the first Women’s Theatre Festival in Britain in 1973 and work that followed in 1974, the first Gay Theatre Festival in Britain in 1975 and the publication of Naseem Khan’s ground-breaking report The Arts Britain Ignores, by the Commission for Racial Equality in 1976. As an associate artist and to mark these anniversaries, Susan Croft is working each year to research and revisit selected performances and companies in the Unfinished Histories archive and share them with others through readings, workshops, the exhibition and symposium and the publication via Montez Press. 

Photo Credit: Susan Croft of Les Autres by Hard Corps (1985)

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