The Criterion Theatre, Earlsdon - Event - a performance of: Springboard Festival 2025

Sunday 11th May. 'Transformative Action' Running Order

Music (30 minutes): Rebecca Mileham

Rebecca Mileham is a science writer and musician whose worlds are in the process of colliding. Her day-to-day work, which brings her into contact with natural history and heritage, helped inspire her recent song collections Underground and Rising Tide. Her new song 'Holloway' isabout the paths that lead us together, and apart.

Coventry Literary Festival (60 minutes)

This inaugural event of the CovLitFest features four local authors, reading extracts from their works and participating in a Q&A, chaired by local author and poet, Alison Manning. Taking part are: Ann Evans, Award-winning author and freelance writer; Professor Nirmal Puwar, Goldsmiths, University of London; Paul Gitsham, author of the 'DCI Warren Jones' series and, most recently, standalone domestic thriller 'The Aftermath' and Anne Harrison, whose book 'Call me Auntie' is an account of her childhood in care and her search for her mother. Interested in attending or helping organise future local literary events? Keep in touch: https://linktr.ee/covlitfest Email: CovLitFest@gmail.com.

Interval

Poetry (5 minutes): Wendy Barzetovic

Drama (35 minutes) 'Through A Stained Glass Darkly' by Anne-marie Greene, Directed by Pete Gillam, Cast: Kelly Davidson, Lilian McGrath, Anne-marie Greene

Madeleine, Roberta and Edith have been friends for years. They are women trying to do their jobs, but they’ve only been allowed in since 1994 and don’t a lot of people let them know it? While they try to serve their congregations faithfully, life is just harder when you’re a woman priest. Clerical robes don’t fit well round busts and baby bumps and having to make the cakes and sort the flowers conflicts with getting on and writing that killer sermon.
On the afternoon of July 14th 2014, the three women get together on the occasion of the historic vote on women bishops. As they share their experiences, we come to understand how they have coped with the difficulty of their situation -the laughs, the joys, the heartbreak, the suffering-and to realise what still makes it all just about worthwhile.
A decade after the date of the vote on women’s bishops, this piece of original theatre utilises transcripts from academic research interviews conducted with 40 clergywomen in the Church of England.