Questions of Survival: towards a Postmodern Feminist Theatre

Abstract

Deborah Levy is a playwright, poet, and novelist, whose theatre work is informed by a concern to combine visual imagery, music, and text. After working with visual artists and sculptors, and performing her poetry in pubs and galleries and on the cabaret circuit, she was commissioned by the Women's Theatre Group to write Pax. This was followed by Clam, three more plays for the fringe, and then by Heresies for the RSC. She is currently working on an adaptation of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. A collection of Deborah Levy's poetry, An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell, and a novel, Beautiful Mutants, have both been published by Jonathan Cape. She has also worked as a writer and director with the Magdalena Project, for whom she directed a devised theatre piece entitled The B File, based on her own short story ‘Swallowing Geography’. This was performed in October 1991 in the theatre of Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, where it was well received by both critics and audience, and has since been staged for the European Arts Festival at Chapter, and at the Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast. It was in Cardiff that Irini Charitou, who acted in both productions of The B File, talked to Deborah Levy about her concerns and interests as a feminist playwright who has chosen postmodernism as a means of articulating her cultural position. Irini Charitou, who complements the interview with a brief introduction to Pax, Clam, and Heresies, is presently researching towards an MPhil on contemporary British and Greek women's theatre at the University of Lancaster.