Nineties Woman is a new show from award winning comedian Rosie Wilby using live interactive storytelling interspersed with video interviews, music and photo archive to trace a journey through early 90s feminism, refracted through a very personal lens.

Rosie Wilby studied at York University in the early 90s against a backdrop of John Major and riotgrrrl. She discovered the University feminist newspaper ‘Matrix’ (Greek for ‘womb’) and decided to join the collective. And, yet, as a geeky Electronics undergrad with an unfortunate perm and coming to terms with her sexuality, she didn’t quite fit in with the academic political lesbians with their History, Politics and English degrees. She was involved with a legendary guerrilla midnight mission to daub a wall with a green and purple painted ‘Sisterhood is Powerful’ slogan just for the cover of Issue 3 but never quite managed to catch the eye of the inspiring ‘Kate’ who always seemed to be at the centre of things. In fact when Kate staged a mock wedding outside York Minster to her girlfriend on Valentine’s Day 1991, Rosie found herself on the sidelines yet still excited to be part of something radical – I mean, gay people would never be allowed to get married, would they?? 

In 2013 she discovered long treasured 20 year old dusty copies of Matrix in her parents’ attic and decided to set about tracing some of the women she’d not quite connected with at the time (including fellow comedian Zoe Lyons, who had also been very fleetingly involved) to see what they were doing now and how their perceptions of feminism had shifted.

Nineties Woman was commissioned by Shout Festival Birmingham for a premiere at MAC in March 2013 before it appeared at Outburst Festival Belfast and Camden People’s Theatre Calm Down Dear Festival (alongside Bridget Christie and Sara Pascoe) and was supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Creation of the piece was supported by: Ben Walters, Time Out London’s cabaret editor; Naomi Paxton, actress, character comedian and writer (The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays); and Colin Watkeys, director of several internationally touring shows with performer Claire Dowie.