Venue: Lost Theatre, Wandsworth
Tickets: From £9 Buy
90s Woman Trailer from Wendy B on Vimeo.
A twenty first century reflection on feminism in the 90s? It's hard not to start taking a Marxist position on the dichotemy here, and very hard not to sound wanky or pretentious.
Thankfully, we have Rosie, who's going to do that for us with a humourous, mutli media and highly personal journey in the form of a one woman show.
The 90s was very much a time when grass roots campaigning and activism was prevalent in student life and feminist movements - how was it done before we had mobile phones, flashmobs, e-petitions, youtube, twitter or facebook (for the younger of you, those times did exist!)
And how is it possible to look back on those times without using modern technology (a product of capitalism) to create meaning?
What impact did it have to be part of a movement - one as important as feminism, and how did it shape the people those activists and students grew up to be? What happens to that passion, is it still there twenty years later? And ultimately, are the issues young feminists are campaigning about today any different from those we fought against twenty, thirty, forty years ago?
(I'm hoping Rosie has some answers for all these questions... I'm happy that the show is billed as 'part documentary, part detective story and part unrequited love story, Rosie traces this original collective and investigates what happened to feminism (and the woman that everyone had a crush on)')
Says Rosie, “I started reading books and
articles by some of the younger feminists coming through, like Kat Banyard, and
started wondering again about Matrix - what our legacy had been, whether it was
still going and what my fellow writers were doing these days. I found my dusty
old copies up at my Dad’s among all my old stuff and, once I started reading
them again, found myself on a detective mission to find out. It turns out a
later group of York
students started up a new feminist zine, Matrix Reloaded, in 2006. They were
still featuring a lot of the same issues which, in some ways is frustrating as
it demonstrates that we haven’t come very far over the last decade, but it was
great to meet them and know we’d inspired them to create something. That
meeting wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t started making this show.”
Nineties Woman was commissioned by Shout
LGBT Festival at Mac in Birmingham
in March 2013 and is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Creation of the piece was supported by: Ben Walters, Time Out London’s cabaret
editor; Carolyn Reid, writer, director and editor of feature documentary film
Jan’s Coming Out; Naomi Paxton, actress, character comedian and writer (The
Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays); and Colin Watkeys, producer of several
internationally touring shows with performer Claire Dowie.
By Katie
