Britain's original and best festival of innovative feminist theatre, CALM DOWN DEAR, is back for a fourth year with a scintillating line-up including porn, pole dancing, power dressing... and feminists with penises.
Award-winning company Snuffbox Theatre arrive laden with plaudits fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe with Blush, their follow-up to hit play Bitch Boxer (20-24 September). Teaming up again with playwright and actor Charlotte Josephine, the company's latest shines a light on revenge porn and relationships with, and on, the internet.
They lead a strand of work holding the gender politics of the porn industry to account. CrossLine Theatre's Cream Pie (28 & 29 September) charts the impact of the prevalence of porn on the sex lives of millennial women, and Tight Theatre's PUSSY examines the highly sexualized, media fueled world of teenage girls - complete with Beyonce songs.
Elsewhere in the festival, CPT embraces true gender equality with a strand of work by male feminists. Testament, recipient of a CPT seed commission for artists from BAME backgrounds, is a Guinness world record holding beatboxer; in The Privilege Show (30 September) he explores his changing perception of his own gender privileges and prejudices following the birth of his daughter.
Tom Ross Williams invites the audience to break the rules of the patriarchy in Give Me Your Skin (28 & 29 September). And Olly Hawes' The Absolute Truth About Absolutely Everything (22 September; 6-8 October) places an unprepared female performer centre stage, acting out a crisis in the writer's own life.
This year for the first time Calm Down Dear's special brand of patriarchy-smashing theatre goes national, with our partners Bike Shed Theatre hosting their very own Calm Down Dear festival in Exeter (3-15 October). The programme includes familiar favourites from CPT's line-up, as well as a host of feminist artists based in the South-West (bikeshed.co.uk).
Other highlights of the festival include Keir Cooper and Rose Biggin's BADASS GRAMMAR (5&6 October), a collaboration between a pole dancer and a guitarist; Created a Monster's GLAMF*CKERY! (20 Septempber), an unapologetic look at the masculinisation of women in power roles; and BARDO (25 September) - an interconnected audio walk and series of workshops inspired by Caroline Smith's residency at the Feminist Library. And Milk Presents, recently announced as recipients of CPT's Home Run commission and creators of Calm Down Dear 15 hit Joan, take over the lobby with an interactive installation exploring gender identity, as part of their work on new project BODIY (9 October).
Find full listings and book tickets at www.cptheatre.co.uk
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