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Women on Top: the leading ladies readressing gender-inequality in the industry

By CW Contributor on 10/11/2016

Kings, rappers and schemers: the gender-blind casting on stage and screen helping to redress male dominance in the industry

Who run the world? A female King Lear

Glenda Jackson has been vocal about women in theatre, criticising the ‘deeply deeply depressing’ lack of female roles on the stage. Her portrayal of the part of King Lear is as such refreshingly indifferent to gender, so much so that you forget that talent overtakes any preoccupation with gender.

WHEN

25 Oct 2016 – 03 Dec 2016, 7:30 PM – 11:00 PM

WHERE

The Old Vic
The Cut, London, SE1 8NB

Tamsin Greig National Theatre Twelfth Night

She's a Lady: Malvolia in Twelfth Night

Tamsin Grieg is our gender-swapping champion in Simon Godwin's first of two National Theatre Shakespeare productions. She will play 'Malvolia', the female manifestation of everyone's favourite yellow-tights-wearing scheming antagonist. In a play with cross dressing and mistaken identity at its very heart and talented character actors like Grieg, it's not the gender but the delivery that we'll have our eyes on.

WHEN

01 Feb 2017 – 30 Apr 2017, From February 2017; dates and times TBC

WHERE

National Theatre
South Bank, London, SE1 9PX

A Punk Queen Cymbeline

It's refreshing to see a play where women take centre stage with as much power and gumption as men. Gillian Bevan's Cymbeline is strong and bold as the role-flipped Queen straight out of a 1970s punk film, and her lost daughter Guideria is as anarchically wild and ferocious as her brother. With Posthumus just as sensitive to heartbreak as his beloved Innogen, this is an adaptation which doesn't conform to the traditional stereotypes.

WHEN

02 Nov 2016 – 17 Dec 2016, Matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays

WHERE

Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

Harriet Walters in all female Shakespeare

Shakespeare in a Women's Prison

For 13 weeks, Donmar Temporary Theatre will transcend the borders of gender for a season of all-female Shakespeare at Kings Cross. Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest are being re-imagined in a women's prison under the direction of Phyllida Lloyd, where powerlessness, entrapment and repression are sure to resonate with the themes of modern feminism and tackle the preponderance of the white, male and pale actors casted in Shakespeare's plays.

WHEN

23 Sep 2016 – 17 Dec 2016, Performance times tbc

WHERE

King's Cross
On the corner of King’s Boulevard and Good’s Way King’s Cross, London, N1C

The Truth Beneath, Korean Film Festival London 2016

The Female Gaze: London Korean Film Festival

This November, London plays host to the Korean Film Festival. The motif of the festival this year is films made by women, and the films showcased will highlight the lives and viewpoints of female stories, actors and directors with classics like 1955's The Widow and new Korean hit, The Truth Beneath.

WHEN

03 Nov 2016 – 27 Nov 2016, Times vary according to cinema

WHERE

Various Locations

Rapping for Rights: Sonita

This powerful documentary about Sonita Alizadeh is not just an Afghanistan documentary but a rap film, also covering women's rights and the migrant crisis. Sonita follows young Sonita Alizadeh, an Afghan refugee living in the Iranian capital of Tehran, as she attempts to forge a career as a rapper. Her idol is Rihanna, only instead of rapping about parties and boyfriends, she spits with intrepid lyrical eloquence about women’s rights. A true and empowering story of perseverance.

WHEN

21 Oct 2016 – 30 Nov 2016, Times vary according to cinema

WHERE

Various Locations

Women Centre Stage Festival: Hampstead Theatre

The Sphinx Theatre Company exists to redress the gender imbalance in theatre in the arts. After storming the Hampstead Theatre stage with 'Heroines' theatre festival in 2015, Sphinx return with a full feminist takeover and a manifesto for new roles for women.

WHEN

On 20 Nov 2016, TBC

WHERE

Hampstead Theatre
Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London, NW3 3EU

Women on Top: the leading ladies readressing gender-inequality in the industry

Kings, rappers and schemers: the gender-blind casting on stage and screen helping to redress male dominance in the industry

Who run the world? A female King Lear

She's a Lady: Malvolia in Twelfth Night

A Punk Queen Cymbeline

Shakespeare in a Women's Prison

The Female Gaze: London Korean Film Festival

Rapping for Rights: Sonita

Women Centre Stage Festival: Hampstead Theatre

RSC

Theatre

National Theatre

NT December Booking

Shakespeare

Old Vic

Barbican

Documentary

World Cinema

Tom Stoppard revival extended: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Old Vic theatre review ★★★★★

Angels in America, National Theatre review ★★★★★

Follies, National Theatre review ★★★★★

Killology, Royal Court

Art, Old Vic review ★★★★★

Road, Royal Court review ★★★★★