An all-female cast will star in a trio of plays charting the journey of women over the last 100 years at the Park Theatre this summer.
Shutters: Snapshots Of Life Behind Closed Doors, which features short plays by Brooke Allen, Philip Dawkins and Susan Glaspell, will run at the north London venue from 9 July to 3 August.
While Allen and Dawkins are both emerging Chicago playwrights – Dawkins has won the Windy City’s Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work and Allen has been nominated – Glaspell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary of Eugene O’Neill.
Glaspell’s Trifles plays as part of Shutters. A thriller written in 1916, it features a subtle but courageous feminism. Dawkins’ Cast Of Characters is a witty family drama and The Deer, by Allen, is the tale of a woman attempting to cope with her grief.
Speaking about the shows, director Jack Thorpe Baker said: “It is my pleasure to present this program, celebrating women and showcasing Chicago theatre, at Park Theatre this summer. When considering the subject matter of all three plays it seemed a natural conclusion that they should be performed by an all-female ensemble playing both male and female roles, and now I can’t imagine these pieces being performed any other way!
“It’s rare to have such strong pieces for women featured together on one bill, and will be an exciting challenge for the performers, not only to carry the central theme across three distinct narratives, but also to fully inhabit the opposite gender, with all its most unsympathetic traits intact!”
National Theatre regular Beverley Longhurst (All My Sons, Mourning Becomes Electra) stars in the production, which plays in the venue’s Park90 space, with Nicola Blackman (The Lion King, Lyceum Theatre), Yolanda Kettle (Birdland, Royal Court), Joanna Kirkland (A Chorus Of Disapproval, Harold Pinter Theatre), Lucia McAnespie (The Silver Tassie, National Theatre) and Matilda Thorpe (When We Are Married, Garrick Theatre).
Shutters opens at the Park Theatre’s 90 seat space following the run of Ché Walker’s acclaimed Klook’s Last Stand.