Anger over Epstein and Andrew fuels festival of 'female anarchy'

7 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on Google Ian YoungsCulture reporter BBC Preparations for All the Rage, which combines performances and artistic installations, have been taking place in the venue in the City of London Dozens of leading female writers are uniting to stage an ambitious theatrical event in a financial office to express their "seismic rage" over the Epstein files and honour his victims. Titled All the Rage, the rapidly assembled large-scale performance will be staged in 15 rooms of a former insurance building in the City of London from Thursday. "It's a huge office that was all about men and money, and we've peopled it with a kind of female anarchy, which feels really exciting," said writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who set up the project. Lucy Kirkwood, Penelope Skinner, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti are also among more than 70 UK-based playwrights taking part. They have each written short scripts and texts that will be used in performances and installations. They are inspired , and the themes of power, abuse and exploitation. Parts of the performance are inspired , who said she was "a sex slave" for Epstein and his circle, and who died in 2025 Lenkiewicz has written a poem in response to the memoir , who detailed her abuse -Prince Andrew. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor reached a financial settlement with Giuffre in 2022 and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Lenkiewicz said she was "so angry" about what she saw as the lack of time given to victims and survivors in media coverage of the Epstein files. "Every day was full of the men and the money - so we thought it would be wonderful to have the female perspective on it," Lenkiewicz said. A recreation of a 1990s teenage girl's bedroom is one of the installations featured in All The Rage Lenkiewicz previously wrote the 2022 film She Said about the investigation into Harvey Weinstein, and was the first female dramatist to have an original play on the main stage of the National Theatre in 2008. For All the Rage, the writer has also penned a letter to a man from her own past, which will be performed and then shredded. "It's like sending something into the world that you have never articulated before," she said. "Hopefully it feels like a release and quite cathartic. It was cathartic just to write it, actually, let alone hear it or know that it's witnessed. "A lot of this work is meant to be about sharing anger, but also something of healing." Reuters The Epstein files included photos appearing to show Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor kneeling over an unidentified female Penelope Skinner thinks "probably every single writer" taking part has "sadly got some personal experience in their lives" that's relevant to the themes of the event.