FREE WOMEN
WHy?
Because we need our own space, because there are too many men playing too loud, because we feel like it, because everything else is so demanding, because we want to break the rules, because we didn’t make the rules, because feminism can be improvised, because equality.
WHat?
Free Women are seven multi-disciplinary performers who create eclectic, thought-provoking & humorous live performances which examine the world through the female gaze. They have been seen at experimental performance night Free Range, Iklectik, Sadie Hennessy’s ‘Blessing of the Beasts’ and Smugglers Festival. They run workshops in improvisation and practice regularly together in their home city of Canterbury, Kent.
The Free Women are currently developing new a show which looks at Folk ritual, dance and music, how it is passed on and who is included and excluded. Inspired by their own experiences of folk in childhood and Dr. Lucy Wright’s Manifesta ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’.
upcoming APPEARANCES:
Free Women will perform ‘Rage Through the Ages’ at Smugglers Festival in Aug. 2026.
Free Women will premiere their new show ‘Womenfolk’ at Free Range Canterbury in November 2026.
Catch them trying out new material at the Free Range Open Mic nights, first Sat. of each month, The Moorings, Canterbury, 7-9pm.
‘Lady, garden’
Through music, movement, satire, slapstick & film, ‘Lady, Garden’ explores the natural & unnatural habitats of the Lady Gardener in an immersive, improvised performance which takes its inspiration from the 'happenings' of the 1970s.
The film above shows excerpts from the first performance of Lady Garden at Free Range, Canterbury, 2023.
Film by Anna Braithwaite, live improvised soundtrack provided by Free Women when watched as part of a “Lady, Garden’ performance.
'A Women’s History of Happenings’
“Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed Free Women's event last night; I was a bit bleary coming home from a full day of teaching, and stepped in without actually checking the Free Range programme. It was a great surprise and I felt totally immersed throughout. More performances should have that extreme level of commitment.” Samuel Messer
This semi-improvised musical performance explores what happens to Happenings when we pay attention to feminist history. Taking inspiration from the work of Yoko Ono and the Feminist Improvising Group, Free Women will involve you in their own Happening, referencing 20th Century works through a 21st Century lens.
WARNING: This show contains audience participation and feminist outrage.
Images: Thea Eaton-Baudains
‘RAGE Through the ages’
You are invited to ‘Rage Through The Ages’ with the Free Women, a septet of musicians, performance artists and writers, with bees in their bonnets. Presented as a dinner party with a difference, your hosts will literally have you treading on egg shells, chanting expletives and tasting bowls of their bitter fury. Enraging and cathartic in equal measure.
Expect dinner party games, curses and tricks but be careful to read the warning signs!
Through their characteristic mix of words, music, theatre and humour, they are turning up the heat on the burning issues of the day. Beware, your blood may boil….
PRESENTATIONS:
Free Women presented 'Writing, Devising, Scoring: Contagions & Collaborations’ a 45 minute performance panel at the Music and/as Process RMA Study Group Annual Conference on November 7th 2025 Goldsmiths, London, UK.
Free Women presented a panel discussion entitled ‘Writing, Devising, Scoring: Contagions & Collaborations’ at the 47th Comparative Drama Conference, July 9th-11th, 2025 at LAMDA, London, UK.