Archive - Claire Dowie

Why Is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?
written and performed by
Claire Dowie  
directed by Colin Watkeys

A comic journey through female roles and dress codes  via "the knicker factor" school discos and errant sperm through the eyes of one young woman who wants to be a Beatle.

SIX stars and one of the Best of the Fest in the Edinburgh Evening News:
Claire Dowie's award-winning comedy on sexual stereotyping is one of Fringe 2013 hidden gems ... hilarious, angry, empowering, political, confused, tragic, subversive but most of all, human ... Tour de force performances are few and far between. In this one-hour piece Dowie gives just that.
www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/what-s-on/comedy-review-why-is-john-lennon-wearing-a-skirt-1-3044967

Still angry, still hilarious, and still right, Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? is phenomenal. This is not only a blistering rally cry for gender equality, but also a life-affirming piece of theatre.   Five Stars.
www.whatspeenseen.co.uk/reviews/face-to-face-why-is-john-lennon-wearing-a-skirt-review/

More  five star reviews for Claire Dowie’s recent performances in Edinburgh London and Brighton at:                 www.twitter.com/theatresolo       

Don't miss "the inimitable Claire Dowie" perform this Fringe Classic:
"A breath-takingly funny satire." Time Out
London Fringe Award Winner 1991

CLAIRE DOWIE    performs

THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY
 
Claire Dowie tells tales of extraordinary, ordinary people in a virtuoso performance of her own play The Year of the Monkey.
(now published by Methuen with Designs For Living & Sodom)

“A superb spiky performance ”                                 (Guardian)

Storytelling with a difference -  funny, too - but far deeper than any comedian would dare.  
Dowie is definitely worth catching.    
                         (Manchester Evening News)

You would, as our own dear Nancy Banks Smith might say, be looking at Claire Dowie a long time before you were reminded of an allotment-mad pensioner or a middle-class matron. Yet these are two of the characters the energetic Dowie conjures up without benefit of props or costume changes.
A convincing endorsement of “stand–up theatre”.                         
(Guardian)

“Claire Dowie combines the smoothness and audience rapport of a stand-up comic, the hypnotic intensity of an inspired storyteller and the inventiveness of an insightful and sensitive author … alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) comic, moving and frightening, sprinkled with flashes of high comedy”                                                (The Stage)

H to He
(I`m turning into a man)
written and performed
by Claire Dowie

Inspired by Kafka`s Metamorphosis H to He adds new twists in the maze of gender identity and sexuality ...  One morning a woman wakes up to discover she is turning into a man.

"And that`s the cunning twist Claire Dowie uses
to explore not just aspects of female ageing,
but also gender identity and sexuality.
Before our eyes she morphs from defiantly
mini-skirted swinger to trousered geezer with
grotty hygiene, sloppy habits and lecherous urges."

"a heady mix of monologue stand up comedy and cabaret
- think Alan Bennett`s Talking Heads crossed with Victoria
Wood and you`re only partly there."

"as she peels away the fake femininity her own unspecified
gender takes shape - discomfiting as well as enlightening viewing"

"an original piece of theatre: challenging, uncomfortable, funny, shocking even, and entertaining along the way"

Reviews from The Herald, Rainbow Network and Time Out