Together, We can be Strangely Better

 'Top Girls’ by Caryl Churchill and the ‘Vamps, Vixens and Feminists Conference’ gave top billing to feminism at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds early in March.  The Playhouse’s Courtyard Theatre hosted these two significant events which highlighted the position of women in society and in theatre.  The most widely publicised and best attended was the touring production of ‘Top Girls’. This is Caryl Churchill’s great play on the cost, to 1980’s women, of the ‘I want it all and I want it now’ culture.  However, Top Girls ran for twelve days before moving on to Exeter Northcott Theatre, it took something else to single out the second March as a special day.

For thousands of years, women have been subjugated by the systems established by and for the benefit of men.  Over the past hundred years, some of these systems have been challenged and changed to the benefit of us women in Western society.  But for a number of years now, this rate of change has levelled out.  Although we can see there is still much that needs changing, we are living on a privileged plateau compared to most of the women in the world.  And the warning to us is, pay attention, because even though we can still see the unfairness and systemic prejudice against women in the existing set up, “This may well be as good as it gets.” 


That is the pessimistic gist of writer and campaigner Bea Campbell’s eye-opening speech, which opened the Vamps, Vixens and Feminists conference, organised by Sphinx Theatre Company, to examine the roles women play within theatre, TV and film, with an emphasis on writing and writers.  Despite her dire warning, Bea Campbell did at least manage to end on a positive note. Remembering a critical comment by a man that a piece of her writing was “strangely good,” Bea used this to encourage co-operation and sisterhood, “Together we can be strangely better!”

This 2012 Vamps Vixens Feminists conference was the fourth, the first was in 2009.  Sphinx was formerly The Women’s Theatre Group, and have taken it upon themselves to organise these much needed gatherings.  The previous three have been in London; this welcome Yorkshire outcrop was attended by around a hundred women and maybe ten sympathetic men.

After Bea Campbell’s thought provoking opening came a so called ‘Keynote Address’ -  I’ve never been certain what that phrase actually means  -  given by Tony Panayiotu who is the Director of Diversity at Arts Council England.  He had to be allowed his say, as the Arts Council sponsor both Sphinx and the conference.  Unfortunately, although he may well be very good at his job, a public speaker he is not.  He told the uninspired audience what the latest policy is and how it is meant to work, but he spoke nervously and ran way over his allotted ten minutes.



Next on the timetable was a panel discussion, ‘Room at the Top’, chaired by engaging columnist and critic Bidisha, in which five people talked about how they had reached the top performing arts posts they occupied and how they encouraged women to do so too.  Panellists were Chief Executive of Northern Stage Erica Whyman,  Sheena Wrigley who has a long executive title at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Dawn Walton the Artistic Director of  Eclipse Theatre Company, writer and international authority on theatre studies Mary Luckhurst and Ian Brown the outgoing (in the professional sense) Artistic Director of the playhouse. They were all billed as ‘leading practitioners’, though the term was stretched to include the executive roles.  These five work impressively hard in the industry and certainly fulfil essential roles, but the questions which the audience would have loved to put to them were curtailed because of the run over by the previous speaker.

This was followed by another panel discussion, ‘Moving Forward’, chaired by Bea Campbell.  More lively than the previous group, Jean Rogers, Justine Potter, Janys Chamberlain and Nadia Albina related their experiences in relation to gender and disability issues in their field and how they thought it could go forward. Most are writers apart from Nadia and all are all actors apart from Justine, who is a creator and producer in the fascinating new world of mixed media.  There was a question and answer session at the end, as there had been with the previous discussion.  Similarly, this was cut off, long before everybody in the increasingly frustrated audience who wanted to, could put their questions and views. The dinner hour was apparently sacrosanct; it was like being back at school.

In the afternoon, a supposed performance of several key feminist texts was a bit of a damp squib and really should have been so much more inspiring.  This was followed by yet another panel,   chaired again by Bidisha.  ‘Creating the Roles’ for women was a discussion between Sally Wainwright who writes wonderful TV roles for women including ‘Scott and Bailey’, award winning playwright Penelope Skinner, Chris Campbell the literary manager of the Royal Court Theatre,  actor Caroline Katz who stars in Top Girls and Mary Luckhurst. This was the most interesting group for the writers in the audience, but was once again cut short by the West Yorkshire Playhouse powers that be, leaving the audience frustrated.

The one genuine chance for us plebs to be heard was in the hour-long Breakout Groups. We were offered a choice of three.  For writers:  ‘How to Write Women for TV’ and ‘How to Write Women for Theatre’ and for directors/producers, ‘How to Get Things Done’. The group I attended, on writing for theatre, ranged far more widely than its title, due to the frustration felt by a number of people on not being allowed to contribute elsewhere. 

A common point of agreement was that many more strong women’s roles need to be created, though for most of us this was stating the blindingly obvious. If this means putting aside the canon of ‘great plays,’ by Shakespeare, Beckett, Pinter etc, which most of us do still admire, then we must do it! We need to remember that they were written by men, for male casts with the occasional woman ‘putting the lamb chops on the table.’ These are roles most actresses are only too familiar with and perform with gritted teeth if they can’t actually turn them down. We need to follow Caryl Churchill and begin creating our own canon of great plays by, for and of women.

After this, the ‘plenary session’ at the end, seemed invigorating. There was general agreement that whilst writing can be a solitary occupation, it is working together which makes writers, directors, actors and producers stronger.  Attitudes need to change, society’s and ours. Women writers can side-step the patriarchy. We are friends, we are not the competitive bitches so often portrayed in the male-owned media.  So when we write, produce and direct, sisterhood, inclusion and co-operation should be ‘the thing’, not just the need for a commercial product. 

There was live streaming of Vamps, Vixens and Feminists via Pilot Theatre and twitter. The cameraman was just that, emphasising the need for more women to get involved on the technical side. Apart from the technicians, the behind the scenes staff in theatres are almost always female, and we can and must all pull together, in the same direction. Regrettably the West Yorkshire Playhouse once again pulled the plug from the public discussion, though not before I had my small say.

“I am a feminist. I am also a writer. I’m not sure if I can always be a feminist writer, but I would urge writers to write women’s roles OUTSIDE the box. Don’t just write about love, or motherhood, or menopause or Alzheimer’s.  Women’s roles can be elsewhere and anywhere!”

Overall the conference was better organised than well designed.  Next time, there needs to be much more space for audience participation and less time for the life stories, however interesting, of the professionals on the stage. Maybe that was the problem. They were seated on the stage. Their active roles were already defined by that position, whereas our roles were defined as passive just because we were sitting in the stalls. 

However, despite this division most of us left the conference with the feeling that we were not alone.  Inside theatre, women are a strong force.  More than 60 per cent of theatre tickets are bought by women.  We can create interesting, joyful, challenging plays for those ticket purchasers and the men and children they bring to the theatre with them.

Returning to the Playhouse later to see Top Girls, the audience contained more men, though women were still in the majority.  Now we expected to not participate but play our passive role as audience. This play however fulfils the brief we had set for ourselves as women writers at the end of the conference.  Although it does address the problems of motherhood,  as a piece of theatre Top Girls is way outside any box and contains sixteen parts for women, which were played by seven actors/actresses – during the conference there was little discussion about the circumstances under which it is right to use the word actress.

Top Girls begins with the longest scene.  A last-supper length table is set for a formal dinner and the cast arrive one by one.  Their characters are based on archetypes rather than caricatures. First to arrive is the super-efficient waitress and second Marlene, typical go-getting 1980’s hostess (more –esses). Next come the forgotten historical women who she has invited to her celebration: The Victorian Lady traveller Griselda, the Japanese concubine Lady Nijo and her eminence Pope Joan, then Dull Gret the peasant, who might have been painted by Breughel. She provides comedy relief , filling her basket with everything on the table in front of her, including cutlery, plates, glasses and several baskets of bread rolls.

The characters eat, get drunk and tell their tragic stories, often talking over one another, which made it sometimes difficult to follow.  These were not conversations.  There was often little listening between them, though by the arrival of the final character, Izabella the Italian peasant girl who had married a duke, they were all getting on like the long lost sisters they were obviously intended to represent. This superbly acted and choreographed scene is complicated and you want to watch it again and again to understand exactly what is going on. The star is the waitress, who seamlessly keeps the diners wined and dined and keeps the performance rolling inexorably onwards, whilst never saying a word.

‘Top Girls’ is an extraordinary creation and the cast worked beautifully together, using their considerable acting skills to great effect. It isn’t a naturalistic play, cutting between fantasy and a kind of hyper-reality, as well as jumping forwards and backwards in time.  Anybody who wants to see true realism will have to go elsewhere.  The second scene shows two girls (played by adults) squabbling and playing in a yard in the country, represented by hay bales. The older girl, Angie,  runs away to London to see her aunt Marlene in the Top Girls Employment Agency where Marlene has just been promoted to MD – the excuse for the previous party to which she had invited the historical sisterhood,  not her work colleagues.

The play ends back in the countryside, where Marlene returns to her sister’s house after six years absence. The reveal is that dull Angie is high-flying Marlene’s daughter, who is being brought up by her angry sister, although we did already know that. The raison d’être behind the play is that under the current patriarchal system and patriarchy’s even more misogynistic earlier versions, women are only able to get on by leaving others behind.  

The play demonstrated women supporting each other as well as they could, under their different sets of difficult circumstances. And so we come back to the call for sisterhood which is where the earlier Vamps Vixens and Feminists conference also began and ended. Together, we can be strangely, marvellously better!

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