Unsung Heroines

Machinal

Tickets £5

Free to those aged 25 and under (limited to 2 per person)

production information

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. – Virginia Woolf

Where are all the female writers in the history books? The poets, playwrights, published authors? When most novels from the eighteenth-century were written by women, why do we end up with a canon and literary syllabus that boiled the rise of the novel down to men?

Inspired by Sophie Treadwell, whose play Machinal was the only text out of 39 she wrote in her lifetime to be published, this Almeida Questions panel celebrates unsung literary heroines from the past, digs into their resounding absence in memory and looks ahead to a future where female stories and voices are not forgotten.

Dates & Tickets

Mon 25 Jun
6pm

Free to those aged 25 and under. Log in and enter the promo code UNDER25 when booking (limited to 2 per person)

Helen Lewis

Chair

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Helen Lewis is deputy editor of the New Statesman, a regular presenter of the BBC’s Week in Westminster and a regular panellist on the News Quiz. Her first book, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in Nine Fights, is published by Jonathan Cape in 2020.

Caroline Criado Perez

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Caroline Criado Perez is a writer and broadcaster, who campaigned for a woman on our banknotes and for a statue of a woman in Parliament Square. Her book on the gender data gap, The Other Half, is published next year.

Sabrina Mahfouz

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Sabrina Mahfouz’s theatre work includes Chef, a Fringe First Award winner; Dry Ice, for which she was nominated in The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence; With a Little Bit of Luck, which has been performed at the Roundhouse main space and was the first radio drama commissioned by BBC Radio 1xtra. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award. Her poetry collection, How You Might Know Me, was a 2017 Guardian Best Summer Reads.

Sabrina is the editor of 'The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write', a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and is an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant, exploring her mixed racial heritage through British fashion. She is currently writing a biopic of the legendary ‘Godfather of Grime’ Wiley, for Pulse Films and was nominated for Inspiring Change at the 2018 Women in the Creative Industries Award.

Additional information

Almeida Questions is an eclectic programme of pre-show discussions which consider some of the questions raised by the work on our stage. In each discussion, invited panellists dig into the key issues and ideas emerging from the show.

Cast & Creatives

Panellists
Shahidha Bari
Caroline Criado Perez
Helen Lewis
Sabrina Mahfouz