I wrote this up as a session I called at  D&D VAULT FEST SATELLITE: WOMEN, THEATRE, AND AGEING: WILL THERE ALWAYS BE A ‘LAST F*CKABLE DAY’?

This conversation started between two people and eventually the whole room was kind enough to join. It’s rather longer than most blog posts….

I’m not sure if we said or learned anything that isn’t in another report in open space somewhere else. However open spacers know that Sometimes a thing needs saying many times until someone steps forward with an action …. To break the cycle. Please….feel free.

A few points of info for context.

I’m 48, I’m female, a theatre-maker and I have taken a conscious decision to be grey-haired. I’m campaigning for the Women’s Equality Party in the London Elections so I’m not in a neutral space about this issue. I declare my interest 😉

I’d just come from a morning surrounded by mostly younger women and had forgotten until I arrived at the D&D and was suddenly conscious of how my legs and hips were tired, after hours of walking and canvassing, that I was the twice the age of the women I’d been working with.

I remembered that my hair was grey. I became 48 again.Whatever that means.

• Women
• Theatre
• Ageing….

I remembered that in a theatre green room, I once had a long conversation with a famous and incredible actress with a long history of writing and producing – about the grey moment. And that became my question to this group.

Despite being a Dame, and a household name, a trail blazer in TV, this actor kept her own grey-haired wig in a bag in her handbag and sported a dyed head of hair. It was a survival strategy and everyone (by which she meant all the female actors she knew of her generation) needed and deployed it. It came up again at a model box showing on another production with another woman of similar national treasure status. Continue reading “Why does [insert name of famous actress] keep her grey hair in a bag?”