International Womens Day 8th March Astor

The Astor Theatre Proudly presents, for International Women’s Week, The Sistren on Saturday 8th March at 8.00pm, Tickets, £12.

Three extraordinary women are drawn together to help a woman in this compelling, funny and moving new play.

The Sistren features the three in a fight for women’s rights.

Three extraordinary women depicted in one powerful new play, touring this year, in celebration of Women’s History Month!

This March, Gazebo Theatre, whose previous shows include the ‘outstanding’ “Jamaica 50” and “Sorry! No Coloureds, No Irish, No Dogs”, are presenting “The Sistren” which features the incredible characters of Claudia Jones, Mary Wollstonecraft and Emma Lloyd Sproson.

Written by Therese Collins and featuring Pamela Cole-Hudson(Gazebo, Catcher Media) as Mary and Tonia Daley-Campbell(Jamaica 50, Black Hill, Araba’s Song- A  Slave’s Story) as Claudia, and Therese (Women & Theatre, Foursight ,Talking Brids) as Emma, this play is set to be compelling, powerful and very funny.

The three stalwarts are drawn together, in their afterlife, to help another woman in her hour of need, in the modern age.  Drama, comedy, confrontation, grief, honesty and comradery follow in another exciting offering from Gazebo, which will appeal to both women and men!

 

Claudia Jones was a political activist and feminist, deported from the US as a communist ‘political radical’, and gaining asylum in Britain, where she worked tirelessly as a community leader and founded and edited the West Indian Gazette, the first Black British weekly newspaper. One of Claudia’s most famous legacies is the Nottinghill Carnival, the predecessor of which she helped to found, in the wake of the murder of Caribbean carpenter Kelso Cochrane and the Nottinghill riots.  This was to be an annual event to present Caribbean culture to the British people and help promote cultural diversity. 

Mary Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the founder of modern feminism, through her most famous book “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792)  Mary caused a sensation with her revolutionary and controversial ideas, declaring that both women and men were human beings with the same rights. She particularly championed the education of women. Mary defied expectations of what a woman should do, at that time, leaving home to work, rather than getting married; enjoying a career as a professional writer; travelling to France during the French revolution, being an unmarried mother and arguing against the status quo.  Mary’s youngest daughter, Mary Shelley, wrote “Frankenstein”.

 

Emma Lloyd Sproson (‘Red Emma’) campaigned for women’s rights, as a key player in the Suffragette and Suffragist Movements, serving time in prison and undertaking a hunger strike, as part of the movement for women to have the right to vote. During the First World War, Emma devoted her time to social welfare work, and in 1921, became Wolverhampton’s first female councillor. When she received the news, she waved a red flag from the balcony of the Town Hall, earning her nickname ‘Red Emma’.

The show is the latest offering from Gazebo Theatre who have been producing inspiring theatre and arts programmes for the last 35 years.

“The Sistren” is touring nationally throughout March 2014 and in June 2014. 

Tickets are available now.  Gazebo are also delivering workshops exploring the issues raised in the play, for secondary schools.

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