In 1975 the stage director Susan Todd, who has died aged 83, teamed up with the actors Gillian Hanna and Mary McCusker to form Monstrous Regiment, a national touring company that would always have a majority of women members, and whose work would explore the experience of women, past and present.
Taking their title from the Scottish fundamentalist John Knox’s notorious treatise The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, the company started with Claire Luckham’s Paris commune-set Scum: Death, Destruction and Dirty Washing (1976); next came Caryl Churchill’s witchcraft play Vinegar Tom. Todd herself wrote Kiss and Kill (with Ann Mitchell) about domestic violence (1977-78), and – in 1979 – collaborated with me on the company’s first play involving a male writer, bringing the worlds of student revolution and schoolgirl romance into crashing contradiction, in Teendreams. As in all of the early Monstrous Regiment shows, Todd was also a member of the acting company.
