Unfinished Histories

Michele Frankel trained at Dartington College of Arts and set up a two-woman touring show on the issue of the contraceptive injection Depo-Provera which was invited to the Women's Theatre Festival at the Drill Hall 1977. She worked as an actress with Ken Campbell and American writer-director Karen Malpede. She founded Beryl and the Perils, and directed their first show, developing their distinctive style.  She worked as a director with numerous small-scale and innovative companies including Hard Corps, Half Moon YPT, and on several new writing projects, with a focus on work by women. She then trained as a teacher becoming head of special needs work. She is developing a new theatre project with writer Judith Johnson on undetected language disorders labelled as bad behaviour.
 

 
Extracts from the interview:

Starting Beryl and the Perils

‘The original idea was that it would be inclusive. There was an ad in Time Out that said ‘Where are the good parts for women in the theatre? Come and create your own’ And the two that are here – Claudia and Didi –  I actually knew personally – I went to Dartington with Didi… and I said I’m putting this ad in but will you come and be in it, please. And they said Yes. We didn’t really know what we were going to do but we and I was really sorry actually that the motley crew who turned up that didn’t quite survive. The first show was about sex and the woman that suggested that topic had been in Playboy which I thought was pretty good, but there were other people in the company who felt they couldn’t actually tolerate someone who had been in Playboy so she had to leave. And that was the first controversy. We worked in a free place off Regent’s Park where, believe it or not and, as the mother of a son I, there was a decision about whether women should be allowed to bring boy children babies in – we soon changed rehearsal space to the East End….’

NY New Cycle Theatre Radiation Anonymous

Video Transcript

Detailed Topics List of those covered in the interview
See Viewing Interviews for details of where to view the whole interview

Bibliography

Link:
www.theatrevoice.com  (then click on Archive and put Unfinished Histories in Search box)