Welcome speech to the Theatre Festival - Interview with Susannah Tresilian

Dr Elizabeth Kuti, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, welcomes the assembled audience to the ‘International Festival of Women Making Theatre to Inspire Change’ at the Mercury Theatre on Saturday 24th June 2017. The Festival was conceived as a day of presentations, interviews, discussions, play-readings and a brand-new performance from Ariadne, a collective of six international women directors who use theatre in sites of conflict. These makers from Palestine, Rwanda, Burundi, Serbia and Sri Lanka are currently developing new theatrical languages in response to some of the most testing political and social conditions, and have gathered at the University of Essex for a residency to make a new piece, Dear Children, Sincerely to be performed that evening. 

Here Elizabeth Kuti details the conference programme, also announcing the premiere reading of her new play Cold Season in Calcutta, an original take on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Furthermore in this video we have an interview with theatre director and journalist, Susannah Tresilian, who founded the Ariadne network; she discusses with Annecy Lax, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, the origins of Ariadne, the purpose of the group, and what she hopes the network will achieve in the future. Susannah also talks about her own theatre practice and the supporters and advocates that have helped to establish and nurture Ariadne.