The Royal Shakespeare Company has revealed it is to hold a series of events inspired by its Roaring Girls season and the Midsummer Mischief festival.
The Roaring Girls season in the Swan Theatre is a series of Jacobean plays revealing some of the great parts written for and about women.
The four new plays in the Midsummer Mischief festival respond to the provocation “well-behaved women seldom make history”.
Three debates will involve expert speakers and commentators discussing what it means to be a contemporary roaring girl, the role of feminism in the staging of the season and the development of the feminist movement.
Roaring Girls Today will be held from 5 until 6PM on Saturday 28 June. The RSC’s deputy artistic director Erica Whyman will introduce a panel of women who have made a “significant impact” on British life: journalist and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, shadow business minister Stella Creasy MP and broadcaster Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
A debate exploring the context in which the four classical plays of the Roaring Girls season were written and their legacy, Roaring Girls on Stage, will be held on Saturday 9 August from 10:15 until 11:15AM.
It will feature directors and writers from the season and the Midsummer Mischief festival: Jo Davies, Polly Findlay and Timberlake Wertenbaker will be joined by Dr Kate Aughterson, academic programme leader for literature, media and screen at Brighton University.
Erica Whyman will chair Roaring Girls Through History, a discussion looking at the changes to the feminist landscape, on Saturday 23 August from 10:15 until 11:15AM.
She will be joined by psychotherapist, writer and social critic Susie Orbach and Professor Catherine Belsey who has an international reputation as a critical theorist.
RSC associate artist Harriet Walter will discuss why there are Few Roles For Women in a talk on Sunday 7 September from 3 until 3:45PM.
The Roaring Girls season includes The Roaring Girl by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, John Webster’s The White Devil and The Witch of Edmonton by Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley. They continue in the Swan Theatre until November.
Midsummer Mischief was inspired by the original ethos and spirit of the RSC’s Stratford space The Other Place under the leadership of Buzz Goodbody. The festival runs in the Courtyard Theatre until July before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London.