The Play's The Thing Company will be in situ at MK Gallery later this month, delivering the fruits of their new project, Taking The Stage - Women in the Performing Arts.
The collective have been awarded funding from Arts Council and Milton Keynes Community Foundation for the project, and MK Gallery are partners in the three day event - running September 12-14.
A new play and five new scratch pieces will air, and be supplemented by panels and discussions. The new play is by Julia Pascal, the first woman director at the National, and called Three Sisters.
Here's the info bit...
'They say that in the last moments all your life flashes before you. Edith, Isabel and Pearl are three sisters. Their parents fled anti semitism in Romania for a new life Manchester in 1908.These daughters of immigrants reflect the twentieth and 21st centuries from a British and American perspective.
Edith becomes the Army’s first munitions officer. Pearl marries a G.I. Isabel’s ambition is to become a doctor’s wife. At the end of their lives each woman remembers key moments of her existence from the erotic to the political.'
Never miss news or leisure info in Milton Keynes - Follow us on twitter here
And on Facebook here
The work is based on her own family so I attach some pics of Julia Pascal, the three sisters, and then one of mother and children. Then one of Isabel’s wedding ( one of the sisters).
The five 'scratch' pieces are from emerging women playwrights, and includes one from Chloe Todd Fordham - who won the prestigious Bruntwood prize in 2015.
Irish playwright Wallis Hamilton Felton is contributing 'Dirty Laundry' about the Magdalen laundries. It’s a pertinent piece about women’s reproductive rights and abortion. Shobu Kapoor (EastEnders and Bend It Like Beckham) has written a piece about the relationship with her mother called 'The Great Escape.
Another piece, Becoming The Invisible Woman by Sarah Wanendeya about middle aged women in a youth centric society. The renowned Haste Theatre Company will make a contribution too, having worked with young people from across the city.
Panels and discussions will also feature in the event, and of course the acclaimed Paula Rego exhibition at MK Gallery will run alongside Taking The Stage.
For more information on the full programme click here
