Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, set in 1980s Britain, three years after Thatcher came to power, is a play of binaries. The first two acts uncover the rampant competition and disregard some women have for one another in a world where monetarism and individualism are rife.
Dave first rose to fame as a teenager in 2016 through his freestyle clips on grime and UK rap platforms. Since then he has proved to all listeners that he’s a lyrical genius and a talented musician who can even play the piano.
More importantly, Dave must be respected as one of the brightest conscious and political rappers alive today. He supports Love Music Hate Racism and has dedicated his song Question Time to dissing Theresa May’s austerity. Psychodrama is the 20 year old artist’s debut album.
The Women of the World Festival will mark its 10th anniversary next year. The event has been so successful that Jude Kelly has quit her day job as artistic director of the Southbank Centre to head up the venture full time. The festival has since been expanded into 17 countries around the world with 65 festivals in countries from Nepal to Finland to the US.
The festival aims to “celebrate women and girls, taking a frank look at what prevents them from achieving their potential, raising awareness globally of the issues they face and discussing solutions together”.
Ninety years ago German theatre-maker Erwin Piscator published his book, The Political Theatre. He wrote that he intended it to provide “a definitive explanation and elucidation of the basic facts of epic, ie political theatre”, which at that time “was still meeting with widespread rejection and misapprehension.”
Mike Hoolihan is my kind of detective. She dresses like Johnny Cash, rarely smiles and the only adornment in her sparse bedroom is a picture of Patti Smith.
Homage to the Bauhaus
Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, 2 March to 2 June
“Those social networks, there’s something sad about them. It’s like a talkative mirror where people talk to themselves.” So Karl Lagerfeld told Women’s Wear Daily in 2014. When the designer died in February, there was an outpouring of grief on social media from across the fashion industry for the self-styled pope of fashion.
Lagerfeld was known to hold contemptuous views of the same world he profited from. And social media was key to the promotion of both his businesses and highly recognisable personal image.
This exhibition of photographs by Katie Wilson documents the living conditions of London’s most disadvantaged children. It stands firmly within the mission of the Foundling Museum, in what was the Foundling Hospital set up by Thomas Coram in 1741. Coram’s purpose was to care for the estimated 1,000 children who were abandoned every year in London, resulting from the polarisation of wealth in the Georgian era. Today the site houses a museum and boasts the legacy of being the first children’s charity and public gallery.
This production of Shakespeare’s history play is entirely produced, directed and performed by non-white women — a first for a production on a major British stage. The costumes, set and music are non-specific, sometimes African, Arabic or Indian. Around the theatre are banners made from photos of the cast’s ancestors from across the world.
The play concerns the emerging national identity and it is fascinating how different the many references to gender and race come across with this cast, raising a new commentary about their original meaning.
