News: On Her Shoulders Presents Staged Reading of "Vagina Rex & The Gas Oven (1969)" on September 17th

Jane Arden

On Her Shoulders is pleased to present a staged reading Vagina Rex & The Gas Oven, by Jane Arden, on Thursday, September 17th at New Perspectives Studio, 458 West 37 Street at 10th Avenue. Doors open at 6:45pm for a 7:00pm curtain, beginning with The Play in Context introduction by Osimiri Sprowal, who situates the script in its historical time and place, followed by the reading and a post-performance reception and discussion. Admission is $20 for the reading and reception. R.S.V.P. at Eventbrite.

Jane Arden (1927-82), like many prolific women writers before and after her, could be described as a mad genius. Born Nora Patrice Morris in Pontypool, Wales, she went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began acting in the 1940s, starring in both television and film. Her first two plays, Dear Little Liz and Conscience and Desire (1954), were first performed at the New Lindsay Theater Club, directed by her then-husband Philip Saville. Her next play, The Party, premiered at the New Theater in 1958 and due to positive reviews received a six-month run. By the mid-1960s, there was a sharp thematic pivot in her works, which became imbued with the politics of the Women's Liberation Movement and anti-psychiatry movement brimming in the U.K at this time. Her film Separation (1967), which she starred in and co-directed, could be argued to be her greatest cinematic inquiry into these socio-political ideologies. Inarguably, her greatest theatrical exploration of feminist and anti-psychiatric politics is the masterfully startling play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven (1968).

The play is a powerful, interdisciplinary text about female rage and pain in heterosexual marriage, first produced in 1969. It was devised in the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, a key site in the alternative London theatre scene of the 1960’s linked to Yoko Ono and David Bowie amongst many others. Originally published by Calder and Boyars in 1971, the play was long out of print. It has been republished in Radical Rediscoveries – Performance Texts from the Women’s Theatre Movement in the 60s, 70s and 80s, edited and with an introduction by Susan Croft (Montez Press, 2025).

Director Liadin Stewart is a multidisciplinary international theater director and devisor based in NYC. She gravitates toward feminist work with absurdist themes. Her interest in horror and how female characters develop agency has defined what work she is drawn to. Stewart is interested in a collaborative process and workspace, inspired by her training in devised theater at Pace University, where she received her Bachelor's degree in Directing. Her work has been seen internationally in collaboration with the Institute of the Arts Barcelona, where she presented excerpts from Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land, a harrowing tale of female friendship and reproductive freedom. Stewart recently returned from Romania where she presented her play The Prospectors at Festivalul Internațional de Teatru de la Sibiu. 

Dramaturg Osimiri Sprowal is an Afro-Indigenous, Trans, Queer/crip playwright, poet, and homeless rights activist. Getting their start in youth slam, they are an internationally award-winning poet (CUPSI 2018). Their book Gemini: Duality of Self won the 2019 Shockwire Micro Chapbook contest. They have received fellowships with Till Arts and CoLab Arts and were a 2022 Marshall Scholar, where they earned two degrees in the UK. They also wrote, directed and produced Perseus, a contemporary mythological retelling of the traditional Greek myth for the Camden Fringe Festival in London. Their work has been featured in 2026 TAKETEN MFA Festival. Presently, they are a Playwriting MFA candidate at Columbia University.

On her Shoulders was founded in 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing them for modern audiences. Since its creation, the OHS reading series has presented 71 plays by 56 writers from circa 955 to 1970 as well as special events on Theatre Women in the Suffrage and Radical Theatre Movements. A unique aspect of the Reading Series is the Play In Context component, which includes a dramaturgical essay that analyzes each featured play within its own time and place; a substantial playwright biography; and an introduction to a reading or performance by a dramaturg who brings a personal perspective to the dramatist and her work. All readings include a post-performance talk-back with refreshments. OHS also hosts a unique international database, 1,000 Years of Women Writing Plays, which is free to all: Link to Database.

Liadin Stewart is the Program Manager for On her Shoulders. For more information, visit https://tinyurl.com/OHSatNPTC.