I’m sitting in an Air BNB in Newcastle upon Tyne where we’ve been performing Odd Encounter all week – last show of the run here tonight. It’s about sex, love and relationships, and in it I get to do a little rant at one point about how the personal is political, and therefore who you […]
Tag: feminism
Truth to Power – the mother of reinvention
Last night at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford University, I presented this at the “Truth to Power Cafe”, a fascinating platform presented by Jeremy Goldstein of London Artists Projects. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting, but on building the new” – Socrates. I haven’t checked the reference… […]
Truth To Power – time to build a culture of consent
This week I accepted an invitation. Jeremy Goldstein, Founder and Creative Director of London Artists Projects was putting on an event called ‘The Truth to Power Cafe’ and inviting volunteer participants to make 5 minute speeches in response to the question ‘Who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?’ […]
An Other Thing
If we’re going to challenge the patriarchy we’re going to rock the whole world.
This is about hope and unity. This is about love. This is about having ‘more in common’. This is about removing blame and always being kind. This is about building communities where no-one is the ‘other’.
Art, power and change
Artists and arts organizations like mine sometimes talk about our work as ‘socially engaged’ work – if arts are a tool for social and/or political change (which I think they can be) then we need to get to grips with how we do that. In the midst of my own grappling, I’ve found myself struggling […]
Echoes of Oz – 75 Dorothys – first steps on the yellow brick road
I’m really thrilled we’ve got Arts Council England’s support to realise ’75 Dorothys’. I’ve been thinking and dreaming up adventurous plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the opening of the MGM classic ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for over a year, now, and this is a chance to make our first significant steps to achieving […]
Preview for An Odd Occasion: Shanaz Gulzar’s pictures from Transform
We created a performance installation at West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Transform event a few weeks ago, as part of our work towards An Odd Occasion. These pictures give you some sense of what we did…
On being an artist and my first IETM
I’m just back from Montpellier, France, and my first (hopefully not last) IETM. IETM originally stood for Informal European Theatre Meeting. – it is now the ‘international network for contemporary performing arts’, which better reflects its membership and purpose. I’d heard of IETM over the years – it was a place that artists went and […]
Images
http://irregulararts.tumblr.com/ I’ve started this tumblr blog to record some images for An Odd Occasion. Some are photos I’ve snapped when I’ve noticed gendered behaviours or things eg the different ways things are sold to male/female consumers. Some are screenshots from my Facebook stream – this is the marketing & messages I’m bombarded with daily.
Words for Women
There are so many words and phrases used to describe women (and girls). Some of them are intended to be positive, flattering and complementary. Some of them are not. Some have the intention of insult. And some of those are really quite ugly. Some of them are funny – and some of them might have […]