A new female-led festival aims to challenge the sexist tropes and subvert the narratives of scary theatre
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Abi Zakarian and Sampira are self-professed horror fiends. All three grew up addicted to ghost stories and gorefests, but as playwrights they have found it frustrating to see the form so often dismissed by theatre-makers as lowbrow or better suited to the medium of film.
They sought to address this last year with a one-day programme of horror at the now defunct Bunker theatre in London, but the pandemic stymied its staging. So they set up a themed WhatsApp group over lockdown instead as a way to keep connected. “We called it Gore Girls,” says Lloyd Malcolm, writer of the Olivier award-winning play Emilia. “It was a way of talking about horror, sharing memes, watching films on Zoom. It became a real support group.”
