Conquest at The Bunker
London, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Support PearShaped to transfer their debut show Conquest to The Bunker Theatre.
Hello one and all - thanks for checking out our page!
Conquest by Katie Caden is the debut show from PearShaped. We make theatre that puts female stories centre stage and experiment with how those stories can be told. We are theatre-makers Katie Caden, Jess Daniels and Rachael Smith
You can check out PearShaped on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Director Jess was Resident Director on Girl From the North Country and has previously directed shows at VAULT Festival and Theatre503. She is into theatre that is funny, interesting and creative, with a great story at its core.
Our Producer is Rachael, previously she has produced the live radio play Suspicious Minds with the Pleasance Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe and London, and created urban adventures with Sh’Bang Theatre and lairy, late night cabaret at the Underbelly Southbank with Finger in the Pie.
Katie is a playwright who likes to write honest, relatable stories about how we live our lives today and experiments with the way those stories can be told on stage. She has had work performed at Camden People's Theatre, Theatre 503, Southwark Playhouse and Battersea Arts Centre. She was also part of Soho Young Writers Lab, where Conquest was born.
About the show
A chance meeting in a pharmacy. Alice is looking for the morning after pill. Instead she meets Jo, and is drawn into a world of radical, female activism.
Welcome to Conquest: the world’s first revenge cupcake company.
Following a ★★★★ run at VAULT Festival in February 2018, this “timely, humorous look at feminism, period-shaming and the glaring issues of a patriarchal society” (A Younger Theatre) is transferring to the Bunker Theatre for two weeks from 29th May until 9th June.
Conquest is a funny and honest exploration of sexual consent and the minefield of today’s feminism. Think Fight Club meets Calendar Girls. With sex education repeatedly on the agenda in parliament and evidence of sexual misconduct continually re-surfacing in the media, this is a timely piece reflecting on consent and the inequalities women still face in the bedroom.
Conquest is a two-woman show performed once again by the brilliant Colette Eaton and Lucy Walker-Evans. During the hour they take on multiple different characters, switching seamlessly from one woman to another to introduce you to the whole Conquest team.
“This is a Conquest [people] should be boasting they have seen” (British Theatre Guide)
Why do you want my money?
As an emerging theatre company, having the opportunity to transfer our debut show to The Bunker is one we absolutely couldn’t turn down.
However, the short timescale means that we need some financial help to boost the money that we can pay our actors, the creatives involved in the project and then hopefully pay ourselves.
This show is one that we’ve been working on for two years, and we’re so proud of how well it's doing. With your support, we can make sure that the show is the best it can be, while financially supporting all those involved.
So where exactly is the money going to go?
Fees
Paying people fairly. We are professionals but the reality of the world of the theatre is that it is very difficult to pay people as professionals, especially when you’re a relatively new company like us. If you're a theatre buff, you may have seen prominent theatre critic Mark Shenton saying he won't review shows that operate a profit share policy, meaning countless shows will miss out on reviews, making it harder to reach their audiences and raise their profile. The reality is that most companies can't afford to do anything other than a profit share, at least until they’ve had a runaway hit and the funders come knocking.
We believe it is important to pay everyone for the time and effort they’re putting into Conquest.
Marketing
We’ve already discovered that Conquest appeals to a wide audience. From young women who know their Judith Butler from Beyoncé to older men just starting to get woke, it’s the show’s humorous and candid take on experiences and complexities of modern feminism that audiences are loving. However, half the battle we face as theatre-makers is ensuring we reach that audience and getting the word out far and wide is costly. We’re working with a fabulous designer, Mary Howell, who is creating posters, flyers plus a whole load of digital marketing that we need to get seen by our potential audience – and we’ll be paying her too.
Outreach
Making the reach of the show wider than just the individual. We've already worked with charities Tender and Rape Crisis to deliver post-show discussions, and the more money that we are able to raise, the more we can spend developing our outreach as a company and opening up important conversations around consent and healthy relationships. Plus, donate £10 or more and we will be giving boxes of tampons to the brilliant charity Bloody Good Period.
Want to know more about us/Conquest/the way we work?
Keep up to date with all things PearShaped on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or check out our website.
Tickets are available HERE for Conquest at the Bunker
Want more? Here are some things we wrote about developing Conquest and the things we are interested in......
Katie on developing the show for A Younger Theatre
The Three of us chatting Conquest with Miro Magazine
Jess and Katie's guest blog for Camden People's Theatre
Katie on politics and theatre for Broadway World
Thank you for reading.
Anything you can donate will make a huge difference to us, whether it’s a fiver or five hundred pounds, your support will enable us to make a top-quality show, paying our team and artists and enable us to reach further with Conquest.
Jess, Rachael and Katie x
This project successfully funded on 29th May 2018