Liane Aukin

Sadly Liane Aukin’s was one of those Unfinished Histories  interviews that never came about. We discussed doing one on several occasions and there was a fascinating talk I had with Liane in a Kentish Town pub where I so wished I had an audio recorder with me, and she told me about writing scripts for a site-specific performance in a swimming pool and for Emergency Exit Arts, as well as being involved in the first Women’s Theatre season at the Almost Free Theatre in 1974, as well as something about  her career as actress, writer, director, radio producer and psychotherapist and her involvement in Greenham protests. She was also involved in the Women’s Theatre season at the Leicester Haymarket sometime afterwards. She wrote in her essay ‘Insider’ in Women and Theatre: Calling the Shots edited  by Susan Todd [now Lily Susan Todd], Faber & Faber, 1984: ‘They were both exciting and important projects but the centre of my emotional life was the learning experience of being with and talking to women from all walks of life and taking part in various actions, which developed theory out of practice.  I was still an outsider, one of the ‘others’, but I’d been reclassified as Liberated. I was still overworked and underpaid, I still felt unease and a great flow of anger, but this was no longer considered a personal idiosyncrasy. It was given official, political status.’  See The Guardian obituary for more.