Five Female Powerhouses of Theatre

By Aya O’Shea

The theatre industry has received a reputation for being somewhat of men’s club. Despite women making up the majority of theatre audiences,[1] female playwrights and directors can feel sparse on the ground in mainstream theatre. Do not despair quite yet though. I have collated here, a list, for your perusal, for your study and to fuel new obsessions. (If you ask nicely I’ll show you my shrine to Sonia Friedman.) The following creatives are some of the powerhouses of British and International theatre, all immensely successful in their respected fields, and all women.

Writer: Laura Wade

Laura Wade is a playwright famous for writing ‘Home, I’m Darling’ produced at the National Theatre in 2018, and ‘Posh’ produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 2010. Wade studied drama at Bristol University and made her way into professional theatre through the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writer’s Programme. She was since written for the Soho Theatre in London and the Luna Theatre Company in Philadelphia, USA.

Her most famous play, ‘Posh’, concerns the an evening’s escapades with an elite oxford dining club, ‘The Riot Club’, a fictionalised version of the infamous Bullingdon Club. In the original production, scene changes were filled by the Riot Club boy’s a cappella renditions of contemporary hits such as ‘Wearing My Rolex’ by Wiley and for the 2012 revival, LMFAO’s I’m Sexy and I Know It.  Posh was also adapted into a film called, The Riot Club, in 2014.

Wade’s plays whilst being sometimes political and always socially conscious, her humour is their defining feature. In an interview with the Guardian, she explains that ‘Theatre has felt like a drug since she first saw an audience laugh at jokes she had written… if we want to make people feel capable of changing things, a dose of optimism goes a long way.’[2]  

Laura Wade’s play Posh is being performed in the Byre Theatre by Mermaids Production Fund, on the 2nd and 3rd of November.

Producer: Sonia Friedman, OBE

Sonia Friedman boasts 58 Oliver awards, 34 Tony awards, 2 Baftas and an OBE for her producing work. She has been voted ‘producer of the year’ for 4 years running and has featured on Times magazine’s 100 most influential people, not just in theatre, in the world.

Friedman began her theatrical endeavours studying stage management at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, before moving into theatre production. Friedman has worked at The National, co-founded Out of Joint (a new writing theatre company), and served as a senior producer at ATG (Ambassadors Theatre Group), before forming her own eponymous production company in 2012.

Sonia Friedman Productions have been responsible for the UK’s Book of Mormon, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls- The musical and Tom Stoppard’s Leopaldstadt to name just a few. They have also produced award winning TV, including Wolf Hall, staring Mark Rylance.

Friedman works at the very heights of commercial theatre and describes producing as a ‘high-wire act… It’s intoxicating. It’s devastating when it doesn’t work but, my God when it does it just feels like you’ve conquered the world.”[3]

Director: Emma Rice

Emma Rice trained as an actor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and began her career as an ensemble member in Kneehigh, a Cornish based, devised theatre company. She rose to the ranks of Artistic Director of Kneehigh having incredible national and international success with tours of ‘The Red Shoes’ in 2010 and ‘Dead Dog in a Suitcase’ in 2014.

In 2016 she became the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. Her 2016 production of Midsummer Night’s Dream mixed ‘Elizabethan with the modern and Shakespeare’s text with a touch of David Bowie’.[4]  She sadly left after only a year, due to concerns about her innovative style of theatre breaching the Globe board’s guidelines on authenticity and use of technology. Despite this wobbly reception, Standard Issue Magazine named her woman of the year in 2016 for ‘her fearlessness, leadership, innovation and bravery’.

After her brush with the Globe, she went on to forming her own theatre company Wise Children, named after Angela Carter’s Novel. Wise children are currently in residence at the Old Vic London and Bristol Old Vic, with their production Bagdad Café.

Rice’s productions are magical, joyful but also heart wrenching, incorporating dance and music, panto and puppetry. She explains that this kind of playfulness that is integral to poignant theatre: ‘It’s the same bit of you that gets the giggles at a funeral… at the most serious moments, terrible things happen. Laughter and tears are very close’.[5]

Designer: Es Devlin, OBE

Es Devlin is an Artist and Stage Designer, famous for her instillations and unique set design. She studied English Literature at Bristol University, and then undertook a foundation study in fine art at Central St Martins, specialising in theatre design.

One of her first large scale professional gigs was designing the set for Trevor Nunn’s revival of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal in 1998 for the National Theatre. Devlin’s striking set, playing with shadow and light, stole the show. On opening night, Pinter himself was doing a meet and great and said: ‘have you met Es Devlin? She wrote the play?’

Since then, she has received three Oliver awards for her set design. Worked on instillations in Trafalgar square and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has designed stage shows for Beyonce, Kanye West and the Royal Opera House. And as if she didn’t have enough feathers in her hat already, she designed not only the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012, but also the Rio De Jannero 2016 opening ceremony.

Devlin has a design studio on the ground floor of her house in which she usually employs between eight and ten employees, mostly women, to work on her many various projects in different stages of development.

Critic: Lynn Gardener

Lynn Gardner is one of the biggest names in British theatre criticism. She has written for the Guardian and Independent for many years, covering mainly fringe and alternative theatre. She is currently an associate editor of The Stage and publishes a regular blog on theatrical events.

Gardener is also a teacher at Drama Centre at Central St Martins, running an MA in Dramatic Writing, passing on her unique critical skills. In 2017, she received, the Total Theatre Significant Contribution Award for her work chronicling the Edinburgh Fringe, and the UK Theatre Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.

Somehow while writing 130 Reviews, 150 Blog posts and 28,000 words of features a year and teaching a master programme, she has also found time to write two series of children’s books: ‘Storm Eden’ series and the “Stage School Series”, in total nine books.

[1] 68% https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/09/why-there-still-gender-imbalance-theatre

[2] Guardian

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/0bdd5152-c69a-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/may/06/a-midsummer-nights-dream-review-a-rowdy-night-out-but-less-can-be-more

[5]  https://www.ft.com/content/2a4a03ac-9b54-11ea-adb1-529f96d8a00b

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