Women & Power: Why here? Why now? Dr Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Research & Higher Educatio
Women & Power: Why here? Why now? Dr Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Research & Higher Education at the Globe introduces our forthcoming Women & Power Festival that takes place 13-18 May. TheWomen and Power Festival is designed to ask questions about women andleadership in all sorts of areas, so we’re interested in the arts and culture,we’re interested in politics and society, we’re interested in education andacademic studies.Obviously,in the last couple of years conversations have exploded about the role of womenin society and whether or not women have access to power and how much access topower we have. So it’s this relationship between women and power specificallythat this festival is really interested in.We’rehaving this conversation now because of the precarious relationship between structuresof power and women. So we see in some parts of the world women not havinggained power at all. We see in some parts of the world women’s power beingtaken away from them as we speak. I think there’s a lot of fear out there aboutwomen having power but actually what women want is equal access to power and Ithink it’s these kind of conversations that we need to have here.It’simportant at Shakespeare’s Globe because we are interested in particular inwhat theatre and art-making can do in particular to those conversations. Sowe’re going to have some platform events where we invite female directors tocome in and talk to people about what it means to direct theatre in the twentyfirst century as women, as women of colour.Wealso want to have a panel event which discusses politics and activism and whothese women are who are sort of on the front lines of society at the moment.Then we’re going to have the one day symposium which just examines women andleadership really quite intensively. So we’re going to be looking at therelationship between women and leadership and culture and art and politics andeducation specifically as well. What the imbalances are between the differentgenders.Thekind of impact that we are hoping this women and power festival will have isgetting people to talk, getting people to think about these questions about therole of women in society very critically instead of just skimming the surfaceof social media and picking a side. It’s really looking at the grey areas whatit means to be a woman today when we are faced with all of these struggles andimbalances. It’s really about getting people to talk and ask more questions,maybe even put on more events, but we just need to keep talking about it.Artand theatre is about creativity and I suppose they’ve been domains that havebeen male dominated. I suppose that women have had to elbow their way in toimportant positions, taking over theatres, deciding content, curating museums.It’s all those kinds of things. Those have been in the domains of men and Ifeel like the potential particularly for theatre is basically exploding aconversation that women are determining. What kinds of performances are wegoing to see, whose story are we going to tell, are we always going to tell thesame old stories that have been dominating society for hundreds of years. Ithink when women come into the scene, they start to provide alternativenarratives and ideas that actually propel more creativity, and that’s reallyexciting. You can hear Farah alongside playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, actor Clare Perkins, fight director Yarit Dor and Globe artistic director Michelle Terry talking about women and equality in theatre in our podcast, Such Stuff. Tune into Episode 2, Season 4: International Women’s Day. Full transcript available. -- source link
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