Playwright Laura Wade has today spoken out against the inequality facing women in theatre.
Wade urged “everybody in the industry” to take responsibility over the issue, as her stage adaptation of Tipping The Velvet opened at the Lyric Theatre.
The production, directed by Lyndsey Turner and based on Sarah Waters’s best-selling historical novel, explores lesbian sexual awakening and love in the setting of a Victorian music hall.
Wade said it was important to allow women to tell stories on a big stage, saying: “I don’t think anybody should be under the misapprehension that we have full equality in the theatre.
“People are working very hard to make it better and I think it’s the sort of thing that will only get better by people paying attention to it.”
The playwright — best known for her hit Oxbridge comedy Posh that was last year adapted into the film The Riot Club, starring Douglas Booth — added: “It’s about moving forward and allowing women’s voices, women writers and it’s about male writers writing great parts for women as well. It’s about everybody in the industry taking responsibility for it.”
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Waters’s novel was adapted by the BBC for a three-part television series in 2002, starring Keeley Hawes and Rachael Stirling, which sparked controversy over its explicit sex scenes.
The author, who wrote the book 18 years ago, praised Wade’s stage version, saying: “Laura has been so inventive. As I was watching it I was thinking it really is all those different kinds of love you have.”
Echoing Wade’s stance on equality, she added: “There are younger women whose careers are really blossoming in theatre.
“There’s more room, as a result of that, to tell women’s stories.”
Until October 24, Lyric Hammersmith, lyric.co.uk
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