Bryony Lavery: Nerves of Steel and a Forgiving Heart

Abstract

While she continues to engage with collective creation, Bryony Lavery, whose career began in the 1970s with radical feminist theatre companies such as Monstrous Regiment and the Women’s Theatre Group, is best known for her work as a commissioned playwright (specifically for her 1998 play Frozen). Examining the influence of collectives on Lavery as a young artist, this chapter investigates how her innovative writing style is closely connected to a holistic understanding of stagecraft, which resulted from working intimately with other theatre practitioners, especially women. This chapter further argues that while Lavery’s emergence within the arena of collective creation has significantly contributed to her virtuosity as a playwright, it has also meant that her identity as an individual artist and political radical has been diminished.