Following overwhelming response from previous sell-out performances at Traverse Festival; Latitude Festival; and Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Locker Room Talk embarks on a Scottish tour, continuing a vital conversation about misogyny and masculinity which has only become even more urgent in present climes.
The tour comes to Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree on Friday, April 19. Created by award-winning playwright and Traverse Associate Artist Gary McNair in response to Donald Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment, it is a provocative piece of event theatre exploring how men speak about women in men-only spaces. Seeking to uncover how ingrained this sexually abusive rhetoric really is, it calls out both the everyday and systematic sexual aggression and abuse towards women, both physical and verbal, across all industries and levels of society.
Directed by former Traverse artistic director Orla O’Loughlin, Locker Room Talk brings together hundreds of hours of interview material with real men, interviewed in male-dominated spaces, speaking about women. These words are then performed, verbatim, by a cast of four women.
The Scottish tour cast will include Jamie Marie Leary and Maureen Carr, who have performed the piece previously, and two actors brand new to the piece – Nicola Roy and Gabriel Quigley.
The significance of the piece saw it invited to The Scottish Parliament for a one-off staging, with SNP MSP Rona Mackay, deputy convenor of the Justice Committee, commenting: “The magnitude of sexual harassment, assault, abuse, rape and derogatory behaviour towards women has recently been highlighted, following the prominent #MeToo hashtag, and what is being spoken about more and more is the inequality and injustice that it is rooted in… We must challenge the attitudes that lead to harassment, abuse, violence and bullying – and that is what Locker Room Talk does.”
A vital part of each performance is a post-show conversation, giving the audience opportunity to participate, ask questions, examine the issues raised and confront the crisis of gender, masculinity and extreme masculinity – and ask ‘where do we go from here?’.
Click here to find out more.
