Edith Craig March 2022

Edith Craig (1869-1947) was an influential theatre director and costume designer. Her career was long and varied. She had great successes with single productions of the most experimental, innovative and controversial plays, many of which were performed in translation from Russian, Dutch, French or Italian. She was the leading director of women’s suffrage drama and in the 1920s she promoted amateur theatre and sparked several new art theatres. Craig’s ‘laughing self-effacement’ was noted by one interviewer.

*This talk will explore Craig’s achievements, how she came to influence others and some of the processes at work that have overshadowed her theatres of art. She resisted prejudice and fought against inequality. Her life was woman-centred and she lived with her two partners, Christopher St John and Clare Atwood, in a household that became a magnetic centre for new ideas and cultural innovations. She was a pioneer in many ways.

Katherine Cockin is Professor of English Literature in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at Essex University. She has researched extensively in the lives and work of Ellen Terry, the 19th Century actor and her daughter Edith Craig who was an influential theatre director and activist in the women’s suffrage movement.