Women in the arts this International Women's Day

International Women’s Day, or International Working Women’s Day as it is sometimes known, is this Sunday, the 8^th March. Founded in New York City in 1909, it was adopted as a full blown national holiday in Russia in 1917 (when women gained suffrage) and has been celebrated by the UN since 1975 – and yet every year Richard Herring still needs to help the delicate male egos of twitter who petulantly ask after International Men’s Day (19 Nov FYI).

Much debate flairs around quotas and equality with regards to women in the performing arts, but one thing is for sure, there are some excellent examples of women bossing it in 2020. Here are a few that have caught our eye:

MORGAN & ABI’S POWER SHARE AT THE BUNKER
In an industry that often feels inaccessible, where opportunities are out-of-reach for so many, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and Abi Zakarian decided to use the week they were offered in the Bunker Theatre’s Takeover Season this March to examine the reality of carrying out an altruistic idea. Morgan Lloyd Malcolm is a playwright and screenwriter perhaps best known for the fierce feminist play Emilia (Globe Theatre and West End) and Abi Zakarian is an award-winning British-Armenian playwright whose plays include I Am Karyan Ophidian (Sam Wanamaker Theatre); Fabric (Soho Theatre & London Community tour, winner of a Fringe First 2016), and I Have a Mouth and I Will Scream (VAULT Festival, winner of the People’s Choice Award). The takeover includes work from Teddy Lamb, Chris Bush, Katie Lyons, Laura Mugridge, Lilly Driscoll, Salma El Wardany, Francesca Murray-Fuentes, Nastazja Somers and Sammy Willbourne. More info here

BRIGID LARMOUR AND WATFORD PALACE THEATRE
Brigid Larmour is no stranger to championing the work of brilliant women, she directed the first production of Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should in the 80s, pushed female directors repeatedly onto the lists for consideration for West End Shows in the 90s and her all female Much Ado About Nothing was an homage to the servicewomen of World War Two in 2018. And lest we forget she isn’t just the AD of Watford Palace, she’s the Chief Exec. This year all three in house productions boast brilliant women on and off the stage, with Jan Ravens and Julie Watson in Talking Heads opening this week, Harvey Virdi playing the typically white suburbanite Beverley in Abigail’s Party and Tracy Ann Oberman transforming Shylock into a single mother in 1930s East London for The Merchant of Venice this Autumn. Looking down the creative and production lists is to see an army of women making these shows happen with her too. When other theatres continue to fall short on bringing women in, Brigid blazes a trail. More info here

CANDOCO DANCE COMPANY
Candoco Dance Company’s international touring repertoire this year is solely pieces by women – Yasmeen Godder’s Face In and their re-staging of Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset/Reset, which they created with Trisha Brown Company’s Abigail Yager, and a new commission from Jeanine Durning from New York which they are making this year. Candoco is led by Artistic Director and founding member Charlotte Darbyshire, who has been making contemporary dance for 25 years. More info here

A FESTIVAL OF KOREAN DANCE AT THE PLACE
From further afield, the third year of A Festival of Korean Dance was announced this week, welcoming four works all by female choreographers. Jin Yeob Cha, the choreographer of 2018 Winter Olympics, opens the festival with MIIN: Body To Body. Jin Yeob Cha was a highlight of the first festival in 2018, and her new piece is a fascinating look at how perceptions of beauty and femininity have evolved beyond traditional and contemporary definitions. Other works include Bora Kim’s MUAK which has dancers disassembling a piano live on stage, and a double bill from Soo Hyun Hwang and Yun Jung Lee. More info here

PAPER SMOKERS’ MILES APART TOGETHER
There’s loads of great female led work at this year’s VAULT Festival, but one that’s caught our eye in particular is Miles Apart Together, a show about three groundbreaking female pioneers: Bessie Coleman, the first woman of African American descent to hold a pilot license, Junko Tabei, the first woman to reach the peak of Mount Everest, and Annie Londonderry Kopchovsky, a Latvian immigrant and the first woman to cycle around the world. Company Co-Founder Cecilia Gragnani said, “Still today women have to work twice as hard as men to get the recognition they deserve. Still today men are encouraged to explore, be bold and adventurous while girls are encouraged to be quiet and good. When asked to draw an engineer, a firefighter, a doctor, children mainly draw male figures. Annie, Junko and Bessie are outstanding examples of how we can fight to change these preconceptions.” More info here