We sat down to talk with Angharad, the artistic director of New Perspectives, whose new production (the) Woman will be performed at the Park Theatre from 24th September.
How did you approach balancing the play’s metatheatrical structure with its raw emotional honesty so that both elements feel equally vital on stage?
This is such a great question and something that was a tussle throughout the whole process. An enjoyable tussle but also a hard one. Often that’s the sign of a good play. When you’re working in layers of storytelling every director will choose to approach and show this differently. The beauty of this play is that it of calls everything out. M voices the fact that she doesn’t want to write in the 3-Act structure, she wants to use the menstrual cycle as a structure with all its peaks and dips and rage- if we lean into that there’s a beauty and freedom there. But in saying that, there has to be an element of rigour to it. As a director I’m looking for a frame and a structure and sometimes this play totally explodes that. Sarah Dickenson, our brilliant dramaturg said a phrase to me early on in the process, something along the lines of needing to ‘sit comfortably within the discomfort’ and that’s stayed with me throughout. I found it massively helpful and liberating.
We are watching a playwright trying to write a play and as a result the play works on many levels, we’re with our protagonist M as she writes, rewrites and edits live through the process. The piece is episodic, characters orbit M. ` and sometimes these conversations and interactions are real, and sometimes they’re imagined or sometimes projections of M’s sense of self. These are all for the taking. There’s a beautiful and nuanced slippage in these moments that as grounded in reality we feel, as in life, it reminds us how easily the rug is pulled from beneath us.
For me, the meta theatrically sings when we find absolute truth or at least a version of the truth, and as an audience it is up to us to reconcile what we see and hear. It’s what theatre can do best. Show us the innards of the complexity of it all and not present everything to the audiences wrapped in a sanitised bow. As with motherhood this play is messy and complex – and so it should be.
In directing the Woman, how have you navigated the tension between telling one woman’s deeply personal story and making it resonate as a universal experience?
This is not a homogenised experience. Its specific, very specific. It is about a woman who is a playwright and is a mother. You could say its niche. And I’m very aware of that indeed. It was something we interrogated. What the play talks about is a low-level disgust for women and women’s stories and how women feel squeezed into spaces and systems that were not designed for them to thrive. And sadly, this exists and persists for many women across all jobs and roles.
Of course, every audience member enters the space with their own unique lens, and this dictates how they might connect with this story and our production. The play deals with hard conversations – sometimes the ones we tend to avoid whether that be with a partner, a family member, a boss or an ex.
What the specificity does is allow the universality to be found. The play does speak to mothers. And it doesn’t shy away from that, and I think the connections and references are specific but it’s also seeing a woman at her most vulnerable – and at times maybe her most powerful and we can all relate to that.
Throughout the tour I also heard countless times form audience members “I wish my partner could see this” and I know why. So they can hear it. Maybe from someone else. One actor turned up to early research and development of the piece and the first thing he said was “I just apologised to my wife”
What role did your East Midlands and regional theatre roots play in shaping your vision for bringing this story to a London stage?
New Perspectives has a 50-year history of commissioning and touring work, much of which has an East Midlands’ flavour to it, resonating with audiences here and beyond our region. This also exists in much of the work I make and am drawn to. This play speaks to ideas of home, deep-rooted in place. The spark for the first scene Jane wrote came from someone telling her they “expected more of her than to have kids in her hometown.” The play is a nod to how careers in the arts are shaped by geography, perception and the stories that decision makers choose to tell. In one scene, in an earlier version, a couple of producers tell M that perhaps she’d be “one of those writers who transcend the region,” as if being rooted somewhere outside London isn’t enough. This is something I find both interesting and bewildering. Even the word ‘regional. Does it really just mean anywhere that’s not London ie. the rest of the country?
I often think about cultural identity in work and in the work of Nottingham artists across all disciplines, whether that’s theatre, spoken word, music or dance. There’s a clarity to the voice that feels unpretentious, unvarnished and cuts straight to the truth of things. Nottingham is home to writers who challenge and provoke from Alan Sillitoe’s uncompromising working-class heroes to Stephen Lowe, who helped shape the city into a UNESCO City of Literature and a body of plays by Amanda Whittington who remains the most performed female playwright in the UK
And right now it feels like Nottingham is having its moment. You only have to look at the West End to see Nottingham playwrights leading the way. James Graham’s Punch at the Noël Coward Theatre, Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down at the National, both leaning into their sharp sense of place telling stories that refuse to smooth out the rough edges. Their plays often carry the cadence of the Midlands, plain-speaking, grounded, but with an eye for poetry in the everyday. I feel this across the city from the sharp tongued observations of Sleaford Mods which sounds beautifully dirty and unmistakenly Notts, the swagger of Divorce, the poetry of Jah Digga, the bold performance work of John Berkovich and Chris Oliver. There’s something about the Notts vernacular that has a way cuttings through the noise.
Jane Upton’s (the) woman belongs firmly within this moment. It carries the same clarity and courage, formally playful, deeply human and unmistakenly rooted in Nottingham. Like much of the city’s creative output, it’s unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths while finding humour and connection in the process. After New Perspectives 2019 West End run of Chigozie Obiama’s Nigerian The Fishermen, it is timely for the company to return to the capital to share part of the company’s East Midlands’ cultural identity through this play.
How did you work with Jane Upton to ensure the play’s anger and humour coexist without diluting either?
(the) Woman has been on a real journey in its development, and this was real balance and something we talked about a lot. The first draft Jane wrote was fuelled by this anger and rage and we didn’t want to lose that heartbeat and drive. It’s taken almost 5 years from that first draft to what we’re presenting to an audience now -and with that the play has grown and matured. Earlier drafts were definitely more satirical, but we wanted to expose the truth and connection, it felt slightly too easy to play for laughs and important for the characters not to become caricatures of themselves. Digging deep helped to unlock the key themes. It wasn’t people just being ‘shit’. The people orbiting M hold valid oppositional views, in some cases with limitations and not always helpful. It’s a play that holds up a mirror to the everyday challenges faced by women. It’s full of rage, of humour and dilemmas which invite audiences to make their own discoveries about themselves and others along the way, just as we have in developing the play.
In your view, how does the Woman challenge or expand current narratives about motherhood in British theatre?
I don’t see or hear much comment around that ideas and sorts of female characters, stories and narratives people find palatable to see on stage and I think the play nails this. That idea that female writers are expected to show woman who are ‘kick-ass, sassy’, strong and empowered’ without unpicking what was drummed into us before. Jane and I have talked at length about our formative experiences as teenagers in the 90’s. It was a time when ladette culture was at its height. The ladette was mouthy, up for a laugh, took her clothes off and could match if not surpass, any male counterpart at the bar. It was also a time when teenage magazines like Just Seventeen would give us tips on how to perfect the perfect blowjob, compounding the narrative of what our currency was as girls and women. So, to ask us to now inhabit and represent this powerful kick ass force before we’ve really had time to pick apart our own engrained misogyny and former conditioning feels wild and underexplored. And of course, this ‘currency’ also changes when we become mothers. As the agent in the play says ‘we are no longer theoretical virgins with endless potential’.
It was also time when we were told we could have it all and we brought it! – A kind of fucked up myth. This play screams the truth of women, especially mothers, who feel suffocated by expectations or who struggle to find the space to express themselves truthfully.
I also think the play shines a light on how we are asked to squeeze ourselves into systems that were not designed for us to thrive. Ours focuses on the theatre industry specifically. The idea that we can grab some time to write when the baby naps is laughable yet a seed commission doesn’t even make a dent in any childcare costs. When developing this show for a Spring 2025 tour New Perspectives worked very hard to try and cast a mother in the role of M. But as close as we came, logistically touring made it impossible for actors with young children to commit. I found that sad, telling and frustrating. We were lucky enough to cast the phenomenal Lizzy Watts who is the perfect M. There is some irony that Lizzy toured with her rescue dog which was easier to accommodate in doggy daycare on tour, which compounds the sad truth around working practices for parents of small humans. What’s particularly troubling is that even more so we run the risk of losing brilliant female actors, creatives and artists from this industry when they become mothers.
What discoveries—about the play, the characters, or yourself—emerged during the tour that most influenced your Park Theatre production?
Jane brought this play to New Perspectives in 2022 when I was relatively new in post. As an Artistic Director, I read a lot of play, a lot of good plays, some brilliant plays, but it’s still rare to come across one that screams as loudly as this play did to me. And this one felt pretty personal. As a woman in the theatre industry outside of London and as a mother of twins it could have been written for me! Some great plays can make you feel like you can breathe a little bit easier, can make you feel more understood or less alone, some plays are able immortalise feelings that we carry in the body but that we can’t find the words for, and this is what (the) Woman has done for me and the audiences we’ve shared it with on tour.
I knew that the play felt special and original but you never really know what’s going to land until that you complete that circle by sharing it with an audience for the first time. It certainly encouraged some deep and honest conversations and challenged a few prejudices, so it is a real privilege to get the opportunity to transfer the production and for it to be seen by a wider audience.
Jane and I first worked together in my previous role as Artistic Director of Fifth Word. Her first play Bones had its first outing in 2010 and we took it to Edinburgh in 2012. At that time, we ‘did’ Edinburgh in a way that comes with carefree abandon without the weight of responsibility and dependents. I think the only thing I owned then was a sofa! We hadn’t met our partners, our kids were still a far-off imagining. Theres something poignant in coming back together as women now in our 40’s, still in the industry, with 4 kids between us knowing all that we know now! And we’re bloody raging!
For ticket and info, visit https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/the-woman/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22951793649&gbraid=0AAAABBQWf6uQlp5v0b5K0poTNw8ehfuS2&gclid=CjwKCAjwlaTGBhANEiwAoRgXBaSuIg44fnWQ4llNbkCJlJ07Xmu6LU82qSdvSJA1AAgOz3EFXb7SBhoCMXIQAvD_BwE