Women & Theatre at 40

A lot happens in 40 years. We started before computers, the internet, mobile phones and social media. We have worked through nine prime ministers, survived at least two recessions and a global pandemic. We have witnessed the miners’ strike, the decreased power of the trade unions, the banking crisis, austerity, the cost-of-greed crisis and the bird disappearing from Twitter/X, and we are still here.
 
In 1983, nine women took part in some drama workshops funded by the Workers Educational Association entitled Women & Theatre. That led to a devised piece called Choices about teenage pregnancy which toured girls’ groups in Birmingham – of which in 80s Birmingham there were many. 

Four of us, Jo Broadwood, Sue Learwood, Polly Wright and I decided to continue the work full time. Collaboratively devising new theatre relevant to the experiences of women, we started with a play about girls in care researched with young women and the professionals who worked with them.

Grounded in original values

Four decades later and we remain a female-led company with artistic and operational methodologies that are grounded in the original core values. An open, collaborative and solution-focused philosophy underpins the work we continue to make. 

Our mission is to make ‘Deep work about things that matter'. We develop new work from in depth research, going out talking to people with direct experience of the stuff we are making work about. We are committed to positive social change and continue to work in partnership with health and social care professionals to this end.
 
Over time, my three co-founders left to pursue other ventures and I became Artistic Director in 1995. Since then, Women & Theatre has grown and diversified delivering projects across arts, health, and community sector. We work with groups of all ages and backgrounds with a particular interest in the care-experienced.
 
We devise and design bespoke projects in response to commissions and funding opportunities ranging from new writing performed in arts venues, comedy or poetry nights in local community centres, to site-specific participatory projects in parks, shopping centres, health centres and swimming pools.

Breakthroughs of confidence

Our participatory strand, which involves working with communities, is core. We began with a project with women at Lower Essex Street Probation Centre in the 90s. As is always key to new ideas, there was a visionary worker there, Lynne Fife, who believed self-expression through drama would be very beneficial – not just to the women but also to the staff and policymakers, providing them an invaluable insight into the day-to-day challenges and victories of the women’s they were working for.

The process of making theatre from the earliest seeds of ideas to the post-performance party plants deep roots. We find we can do things we thought we couldn’t; we make breakthroughs of confidence. We find ourselves part of a company with a common purpose. We laugh and cry together. We raise the bar for audiences. I saw that with the women at Lower Essex Street and I’ve seen it many times since.

This participation developed organically from the core principle of all our work, putting ordinary people’s voices centre stage. Projects are developed and produced by working alongside individuals and communities who perform, write and devise for themselves; creating new theatre about the things they care about.

I am pleased that the value of this approach – now known as co-creation – has found its way to the very heart of Arts Council England’s Let’s Create strategy.

Outside the circle of power

When we started in 1983, it was very much in response to feeling that women were on the outside of the circle of power. We wanted to make our own circle, but not one that was closed to others, more like a roundabout with exits and entrances that were open to everyone. 

There is a legacy of equality which threads through all our work together. I have always been mindful to challenge uneven status whenever and wherever I have come across it and to dampen down the flames of hierarchy that still can burn brightly in the culture of theatre, given half a chance.
 
Anniversaries are an opportunity to take stock. Now felt the right time to hand over the reins to a new Artistic Director because, for the first time, we are an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. There is a more solid basis to stand on – something sturdier to pass on.

I am thrilled by the appointment of Adaya Henry as the new Artistic Director. She shares the values of the company at the very core of her heart. Along with the Women & Theatre team and the brilliant freelance artists and creatives, I know she is committed to challenging all forms of inequality and will continue to fight the good fight, striving to represent the diverse communities of Birmingham and beyond, making fresh new exhilarating theatre for all.
 
This morning at our weekly meeting, we were connecting fragments of ideas that staff were bringing to the table, putting thoughts together, starting to lay the steppingstones for new projects. Will I miss that? Yes, Am I at all worried it can’t happen without me? Emphatically no. Here’s to the next 40 years!

Janice Connolly BEM is Founder and former Artistic Director Women & Theatre.
womenandtheatre.co.uk/
@Womenandtheatre