Doing what comes naturally?: Women and devising in the UK today

Mermikides, Alex and Smart, Jacqueline (2016) Doing what comes naturally?: Women and devising in the UK today. In: Syssoyeva, Kathryn M and Proudfit, Scott, (eds.) Women, collective creation, and devised performance: the rise of women theatre artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. New York, U.S.A. : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 253-267. ISBN 9781137603272

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55013-2_16

Abstract

In a 1998 essay on devising theatre in the UK, Alison Oddey refers to “the seemingly natural relationship between women and devised theatre in the 1970s,” which, she suggests, arose “out of a climate which encouraged women to find a voice together through the collective, democratic process of devising.” In this chapter we revisit Oddey’s claim, analysing how the politics of gender intersect with the material practices of performance-making in the UK today and asking whether the notion that devising is a “natural” way for women to work creatively together, retains any credence.

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