HEXENHAMMER was shortlisted for the Untapped Award 2022 and is directed by Complicité Associate Catherine Alexander. It’s a darkly comedic and totally devised piece about violent misogyny and the online ‘Manosphere’, from the early witch hunts to Reddit chatrooms.
HEXENHAMMER is loosely based on The Hammer of Witches, the 15th-century guide to
witch hunting. Written by two Dominican monks, it kick-started the European witch craze and
was partly responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of women over the next few
hundred years.
Incorporating text taken directly from Die Hexenhammer and verbatim text found online
incel forums, HEXENHAMMER explores how men end up killing women as a way to solve
their own problems, and why that hasn’t changed in the past 500 years.
“Sometimes a piece of theatre really nails it. Hexenhammer is a witty
wild ride on the misogyny train, from the 15th c monks who sparked
the witch hunts to today’s incel culture (via Jordan Peterson’s
lobster). Can’t wait to see what’s next.”
– Gabriel Gatehouse, creator and host of the BBC podcast “The
Coming Storm”
Secretariat is a writing and performance duo consisting of Suzy Kohane (The Secret Life Of
Humans, NDT) and Sidsel Rostrup (Close To Me, Channel 4).
We use comedy to open up political issues and get to the people beneath them. We are
focused on how technology impacts intimate relationships, how outsiders become insiders,
and use clowning as a way of interrogating interpersonal dynamics.
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