About Us
The Women in Theatre Lab is inspired by America’s Women’s Project (WP) Lab and Australia’s Women in Theatre Programme which have nurtured a generation of female playwrights and, in Australia, helped contribute to gender parity being reached in the country’s top eight theatres. More details on speakers and supporters can be found on the Contributors page.
Partners on the Women in Theatre Lab include:
Partners
Her Story Productions
Her Story Productions is the new company supporting women in theatre, television and film.
The company is run by Polly Kemp, Director of ERA 50:50, and Jennifer Tuckett, former Research and Literary Director at Sphinx Theatre, the UK’s longest established women’s theatre company.
Jennifer created the one-off Sphinx Lab for Sphinx’s 30th anniversary in partnership with 15 leading theatres and is also a writer, academic and producer whose five year research project on women in theatre has been published from 2019 – 2023 in The Guardian and The Stage. Jennifer also undertook the world first major mixed methods research project into how to improve the transition for women from studying the arts to working in the arts at Cambridge University.
Polly’s work as Director of ERA 50:50, the equal representation for actresses campaign whose supporters include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Emma Thompson, includes creating TellHerVision, the pilot writing for television programme for women writers, with BAFTA winner Joanna Scanlan.
Jermyn Street Theatre
Jermyn Street Theatre is a unique theatre in the heart of the West End: a home to remarkable artists and plays, performed in the most intimate and welcoming of surroundings. World-class, household-name playwrights, directors and actors work here alongside people just taking their first steps in professional theatre. It is a crucible for multigenerational talent.
The programme includes outstanding new plays, rare revivals, new versions of European classics, and high-quality musicals, alongside one-off musical and literary events. We collaborate with theatres across the world, and our productions have transferred to the West End and Broadway. Recently, our pioneering online work and theatre-on-film has been enjoyed across the world.
We’ve premiered plays by Alice Allemano, Steven Berkoff, Howard Brenton, Sarah Daniels, Esther Freud, Peter Gill, Bryony Lavery, Chinonyerem Odimba, Juliet Gilkes Romero, Ruby Rae Spiegel, Timberlake Wertenbaker and countless others, and we’ve rediscovered work by writers including Samuel Beckett, Terence Rattigan, Lillian Hellman, Henrik Ibsen, Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy L. Sayers, Tenessee Williams and Noel Coward. Emerging talents mingle with the likes of Trevor Nunn, Sinead Cusack, Tuppence Middleton, David Threlfall, Jatinder Verma, Sian Phillips, Adjoa Andoh, Rosalie Craig, Eileen Atkins, and our Patron, Michael Gambon.
Our Artistic and Executive Directors Tom Littler and Penny Horner were both listed in the Stage 100, and Tom won the 2022 OffWestEnd Award for Best Artistic Director. In autumn 2022 Stella Powell-Jones and David Doyle succeeded Tom Littler as Artistic Director and Executive Producer respectively, working alongside Executive Director Penny Horner to form a management team of three.
The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain
The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) is a trade union representing professional writers in TV, film, theatre, radio, books, comedy, poetry, animation and videogames. Our members also include emerging and aspiring writers.
We have been negotiating better pay and working conditions for writers since 1959. The national agreements we have in place cover key industry bodies, including the BBC, ITV, Pact; National Theatre, Royal Court and Royal Shakespeare Company.
We lobby and campaign on behalf of writers, to ensure their voices are heard in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
We offer a range of benefits to our members, including free training, contract vetting, a pension scheme, Welfare Fund, entry to our Find A Writer directory, a weekly ebulletin, plus member-only events and discounts.