The Feminist Fletcher Festival presented four staged readings of plays at the historic Black Swan Inn in York by the English Renaissance playwright John Fletcher, who co-wrote three plays with Shakespeare before taking over as chief writer for the King's Men.

 

Each performance was followed by a short discussion panel with theatre and feminist scholars, to unravel the connections between Fletcher's time and our own, with a special emphasis on feminism.

 

The plays were:

The Maid's Tragedy

The Martial Maid, or Love's Cure

The Tamer Tamed (Fletcher's 'sequel' to Taming of the Shrew)

The Sea Voyage

 

Re:Verse also partnered with The York Shakespeare Project to present a panel discussion for their production of Shakespeare & Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen.

 

The Festival was co-produced by PhD Researchers Lauren Cowling and Aurèlia Puigdomènech at the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York, and Re:Verse Theatre Artistic Director Ben Prusiner.