A creative and critical investigation into women in theatre

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The idea for this research project has developed out of a year-long mixed methods research project into women in theatre I conducted with Sphinx Theatre Company, the UK's leading women's theatre company, and the University of Cambridge from 2018 - 2019. The quantitative and qualitative findings from this study were published in February 2020 in The Guardian newspaper1. The study revealed continuing inequality for women in theatre and has been recently highlighted by The Guardian newspaper as leading the way and leading to arts organisation changes, with The Guardian stating: "Earlier this year, research conducted by the playwright Jennifer Tuckett and the Sphinx theatre company suggested theatre's gender gap had grown in key areas compared with eight years ago, when the Guardian conducted an in-depth study of the issue. Specific strategies have been adopted by some organisations to address the disparity" 2 (Weigand, 2020). The Arts Council of England also called this research "hugely important" and has used this research to inform policy changes. At present, the UK government is using this research to inform their plans to rebuild the arts post pandemic. As an award winning writer with a background in the UK, Australia and America, where I have won major awards including one of the UK's leading playwriting awards, the Old Vic New Voices Theatre 503 Award, whilst completing my Masters in Playwriting at Yale, and had productions at the Old Vic Theatre, Theatre 503 and Birmingham Repertory Theatre amongst others, this research project seeks to build on my qualitative and quantitative research by investigating the new area for me, which I have never researched before, of how playwriting can be used to help with gender equality by female playwrights and others in theatre. During recent research in Australia, I found the need for this investigation indicated by academics Lally with Miller (2012), Miller (2014), Hayes (2018) and Haining and Heim (2019), amongst others, who have highlighted issues of the stage, and particularly the mainstage, being traditionally a male space and raised questions about the need for further investigation into how female playwrights can help reconceptualise this place, for example highlighting that the male story is often seen as the norm/universal whilst a story with a female protagonist is often seen as women's niche. In the UK, Vicky Featherstone, the Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London, one of the world's leading new writing theatres, has also asked where are the female versions of work like King Lear or Death of a Salesman (Aston, 2017; Hutchison, 2015). I am also currently the Literary Director of Sphinx Theatre where I have designed the UK's first new writing programme for female playwrights in partnership with 15 leading theatres and funded by Arts Council England, which has also highlighted this issue.Moreover, much research on the pandemic has also found gender inequality is likely to increase post-pandemic, making this research even more urgent to undertake. For example, Adams-Prassl et al. (2020) have found that less educated workers and women are the two hardest hit groups by the pandemic and that urgent action needs to be taken. Similar conclusions have been reached by UN Women amongst other studies.My thesis will thus attempt to address the urgent issue of gender inequality in theatre via exploration of the possibilities of the cycle play, how it has been used in the past to give voice to unheard or under-represented voices, and how it could be used by female playwrights to give voice to underheard or under-represented female voices and help contribute to gender equality.