Brian Logan, Camden People's Theatre (CPT) Artistic Director get’s stuck in.

The fourth edition is upon us of Camden People’s Theatre’s unique annual feminism festival, Calm Down, Dear. So: have we won the sex war yet? Cut to eminent theatre critic Joyce McMillan hosting the Fringe First awards at last month’s Edinburgh festival. “The mood this year is very much one of anger from women writers and performers,” said McMillan, “at a time when some people are arguing the feminist revolution is over, but in some ways things are getting worse.”

Oh dear. Still work to do, then.

When we launched Calm Down, Dear in 2013 – only a short time after David Cameron’s notorious use of the phrase at Prime Minister’s questions – it was at the crest of an extraordinary wave of feminist theatre, comedy and consciousness more widely. It was exciting at CPT to create space for those artists and shows, to feel like – with the help of great performers like Louise Orwin, Bridget Christie, Adrienne Truscott and others – we were playing our own small role in amplifying that conversation and directing that energy.

Three years on – having been compelled by audience enthusiasm to make our one-off festival an annual event – we’re as committed to doing so as ever. We won’t waste energy regretting our failure (yet!) to eradicate gender inequality. Far better to celebrate that the wave has yet to break, that female (and indeed male) artists are refusing to calm down about sexism, that their passion to sing and tell stories and argue and theatricalise what women’s rights and women’s oppression look like in the 21st-century is as strong as ever.

This year’s festival – which opens next week – offers a pretty compelling overview of feminism’s current faultlines. At a time when Britain, and its component parts, are more female-led than ever, and as Hillary Clinton (unless the apocalypse is upon us) ascends to the US presidency, we’re discussing Women, politics and power with a killer panel of experts. That’s a subject to which our artists make only glancing reference – in Glamf*ckery, say, which explores the masculinisation of women in power. Elsewhere, festival headliners Snuffbox look at revenge porn in the Stage Award-winning Edinburgh smash Blush – and CrossLine Theatre take on porn too, in Cream Pie, described as “the best sex-ed class you’ll ever have.”

The pressure to be maternal. Recovering from sexual assault. The erasure of women from history. We’ve got adventurous new performances exploring all of the above – alongside a four-part harmony piece about the Bluebeard folktale (The Brides of Bluebeard), a performance-and-exhibition piece (by Eugenie Pastor of the ace Little Bulb company) exploring pubic hair, and “a one-woman rip-off of Macbeth”. It’s all feminist, but it’s feminism in a spectrum-busting variety of colours and shades.

And it’s not all female: we’ve got more Calm Down, Dear work by male artists than ever before this year. We didn’t take that decision lightly: I’m fully aware that feminism is a hard-won space in which, for a change, women’s voices don’t get drowned out by men’s. And yet – more and more male artists are making work interrogating their role in gender inequality, and we wanted to reflect that in our programme. Can feminism achieve its goals without the active participation of men – even if that participation is merely the relinquishing of power? (You can join us to discuss that in our Men & Feminism panel on October 7th.)

Among the men mucking in this year, we’ve got the hiphop artist / beatboxer Testament with his new piece The Privilege Show, Olly Hawes’ experimental show about masculinity and empathy, The Absolute Truth About Absolutely Everything, and Tom Ross-Williams’ collaboration with Oonagh Murphy interrogating “toxic masculinity” – that’s Give Me Your Skin. I hope you’ll come along and see what they’ve come up with. Like all of the artists who pass through CPT, they’re making theatre in inventive and unpretentious new ways, and they’ve got thoughtful, surprising – and often radical – things to say. They won’t – and Calm Down, Dear 2016 won’t – solve sexism, but they’ll have a heck of a lot of fun trying. Particularly if you come, in great numbers, to enjoy their work and join in the conversation.

Calm Down, Dear 2016
Camden People’s Theatre
Tuesday 20 September - Sunday 9 October 2016
Booking and info: cptheatre.co.uk

About Brian Logan
Brian has been co-director of CPT since Sept 2011. Brian’s prior (and ongoing) theatre work includes sixteen years as a co-director of the acclaimed touring theatre company Cartoon de Salvo, with whom he has devised and performed in 11 major shows, including Meat & Two Veg (BAC and international tour), The Sunflower Plot, Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories (Lyric Hammersmith, Edinburgh Fringe and Kennedy Center, Washington DC), Made Up (Soho Theatre, 2012) and Pub Rock. Brian’s play David Hume’s Kilt was developed at the National Theatre of Scotland and semi-staged at the Traverse, Edinburgh in 2009; its follow-up The Keys to the Universe was runner-up for the Robert McLellan Award. Brian is also a theatre and comedy writer for The Guardian, and former assistant theatre editor of Time Out London.