07 December 2019
Newsdesk
Shakespeare’s Globe announces one-off events Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves and Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse next year.
Jasmine Lee-Jones, Sandi Toksvig, Tara Fitzgerald, Winsome Pinnock and Jason Isaacs will all take part in the Globe’s continuing series of Voices in the Dark events in 2020.
Shakespeare’s Globe is delighted to announce further details of Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves, and Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men; one-off performances coming to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in January and February 2020.
Comprising five different performances in late January and mid-February, Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves, directed by Athena Stevens, will see 20 writers spotlight the lives and work of women from the recent, distant and ancient past whose stories have been neglected or wrongly remembered. Jasmine Lee-Jones, Catherine Mayer, Sandi Toksvig, Eve Leigh, Sabrina Mahfouz and Winsome Pinnock will all contribute to this anthology of new writing, with several writers performing their own work. Women whose lives will be illuminated include American aviator Bessie Coleman, Restoration playwright and poet Aphra Behn, paleontologist Mary Anning and writer and television presenter Paula Yates.
On 20 February, the Playhouse will subsequently host Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men, a new black comedy by actor and writer Lorien Haynes, directed by Tara Fitzgerald (Brassed Off, Game of Thrones), which traces a woman’s relationship history backwards, exploring the impact of sexual assault, addiction and teen pregnancy on her adult relationships. Presented in association with RISE and The Circle, all profits from this event will go towards supporting survivors of sexual violence. Thanks in huge part to RISE’s work, the event will also mark the planned introduction of the Worldwide Sexual Violence Survivor Rights United Nations Resolution in January 2020, which addresses the global issue of sexual violence and pens into existence the civil rights of millions of survivors.
Cast for Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men will include Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, The OA), Lorien Haynes (Egerton) Jonathan Firth (Victoria and Albert, Far From the Madding Crowd), Joe Sims (Britannia, Broadchurch) and Charlie Field (Poldark). Nobel-Prize nominee and founder of Rise, Amanda Nguyen, will introduce the evening.
Writers confirmed for Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves include:
Stella Duffy OBE: Stella Duffy has worked in theatre for over thirty-five years as an actor, improviser, deviser, director and writer, and is an associate artist with Improbable Theatre with whom she performed in Lifegame in over 250 shows since 1998, including at the National, off-Broadway and UK tour. Stella has written sixteen novels, and has written and devised fourteen plays and over seventy short stories.
Emma Frankland: Emma Frankland is an award winning theatre-maker and performer. For the past five years her practice has focussed on politically motivated performances surrounding issues of gender and identity (relating to her own experience as a trans woman). Her solo show Hearty, tackling current media fascination with trans lives and the bio-technology of HRT, opens at the Roundhouse in February. She is the director of None of Us is Yet a Robot - a contemporary performance company that creates ground-breaking performance work based on transgender identities & the politics of transition.
Matilda Ibini: Matilda is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter from London. She was awarded a scholarship from BAFTA and Warner Brothers to study a Masters in Playwriting & Screenwriting at City University. She was Soho Theatre’s writer in residence for the BBC Writersroom 10 scheme and her debut play Muscovado co-won the Alfred Fagon Audience Award 2015. Her new play Little Miss Burden has just opened at The Bunker. Other recent work includes Choice & Control for the Old Vic’s One Voice Festival and A.I.D.A.N for the Arcola.
Jasmine Lee-Jones: Jasmine Lee-Jones is a black British actor and writer based in North London. Her first full-length play Seven Methods Of Killing Kylie Jenner opened at The Royal Court in July and won the 2019 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, the 2019 Stage Debut Award for Best Writer, and the 2019 Alfred Fagon Award. She returns to the Globe having appeared in the titular role in Dido, Queen of Carthage in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2015 as a Globe Young Player. Other writing credits include My White Best Friend (Bunker Theatre), Curious… (Guildhall/Brainchild) and Dark Matter (Beyond the Court).
Eve Leigh: Eve is a playwright, theatremaker, and dramaturg. She was shortlisted for the Bruntwood Prize earlier this year for her play Salty Irina and her play Midnight Movie is currently running at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. Eve trained at the Royal Court Young Writers' Programme and Studio Group and the National Theatre's Directors' Course. Other plays include The Trick (Bush Theatre), Stone Face (Finborough Theatre, nominated for three Offies including Best New Play) and The Curtain (Young Vic Taking Part). Eve is one of the Royal Court's two Jerwood playwrights of 2019.
Sabrina Mahfouz: Sabrina is one of the Globe’s three writers in residence. Her cross-medium show, A History of Water in the Middle East opened to critical acclaim at the Royal Court in October. She has recently edited two new anthologies - Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen (Westbourne Press) and Poems for a Green and Blue Planet (Hachette Children's). Sabrina has recently been called ‘[one of] our most interesting playwrights’ by Lyn Gardner in the Guardian and ‘theatrical dynamite’ by the Independent.
Catherine Mayer: Catherine is an author, journalist, co-founder and President of the Women’s Equality Party and co-founder of Primadonna Festival, the festival celebrating brilliant writing, music and ideas launched in 2019. Catherine performed Hello Boys with Grayson Perry at the Bridge Theatre in 2018. Her one-woman show Catherine Mayer: FFS toured the UK and Ireland this year.
Winsome Pinnock: Winsome is an award-winning playwright, academic and dramaturg whose work has been produced on the British stage and internationally since 1985. She was the first black British female writer to have a play produced by the National Theatre and has worked as a dramaturg with the National Theatre’s New Views scheme as well as with the Royal Court’s International Department. Prizes awarded to her work include the George Devine Award, The Pearson Plays on Stage Award and the Unity Theatre Trust Award.
Athena Stevens: Athena is an associate artist at Shakespeare’s Globe, a playwright on attachment at the Finborough Theatre, and artistic director of Aegis Productions. She is an Olivier Nominated playwright and performer and a founding member of the Women’s Equality Party. She is currently under commission to write a play for the National Youth Theatre, having written plays for BBC Radio 3, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and the inaugural Primadonna Fest this year. Next month will see the world premiere of her play Scrounger at the Finborough Theatre, which focusses on toxic positivity in the face of systematic discrimination.
Sandi Toksvig OBE: Sandi is currently in rehearsal at the Globe for her Christmas show, Christmas at the (Snow) Globe, which she has created alongside her sister Jenifer Toksvig. Sandi is well known to UK audiences as a broadcaster, with television credits including celebrated series Call My Bluff (as regular team captain) and Whose Line Is It Anyway? She took over from Stephen Fry as host of QI, BBC2’s fiendishly difficult and hugely popular quiz, and she and Noel Fielding became the new co-hosts of The Great British Bake Off. Sandi is an activist for gender equality, and in 2014 she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party.
Other contributing writers include: Kelly Burke, Sarah Grange, Jenet Le Lacheur, Kat-Rose Martin, Steph Martin, Christina Murdock, Amy Ng, Olivia Wakeford and Amanda Wilkin.
