Clare Summerskill is a stand-up, a writer, an actress, a singer-songwriter, a public speaker, an oral historian, and a freelance academic.

Clare has been described by BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour as ”A Lesbian Victoria Wood!” and by What’s On Magazine as “One of the funniest women in the country.”

She performs an original cocktail of stand-up and comedy songs as well as her one-woman full-length stage shows to mainly LGBTQ audiences up and down the country and also in the US, and has even been known to make straight people chuckle just a little bit! She brings ‘dyke humour’ to the forefront of alternative comedy. She was once one half of the legendary lesbian-themed double act Alice and Clare (with Alice Arnold). Clare performs at theatres, cabaret venues, AGMs, conferences and festivals.

She also presents themed diversity talks which mainly address LGBTQ history and issues, but which also include a talk on mental health. In these presentational talks, she performs extracts from oral histories that she has conducted, relating to each subject.

Clare works as a freelance academic, having attained her doctorate from the theatre department at Royal Holloway University of London. She is the co-founder of the Oral History Society LGBTQ Special Interest Group. Her publications include: Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories, Routledge, 2020 and Gateway to Heaven: Fifty Years of Lesbian and Gay Oral History, Tollington Press, 2012.

Clare is also a playwright and with her theatre company, Artemis, she has performed in and toured several of her own verbatim plays, including Gateway to Heaven, Hearing Voices and Rights of Passage.

As a writer for radio, Clare contributed to the last two series of Weekending on BBC Radio 4. She also wrote for the BBC Radio 2 women’s comedy sketch show Heated Rollers and she both wrote for and appeared in the first-ever pilot for a lesbian and gay sketch show on BBC Radio 4, So What If I Am?

Awards include: Commendation award for excellent contributions in promoting the well-being of older LGBT people from the Royal Society for Public Health Arts and Health 2014. She was a Finalist Nominee for LFest Arts Event 2017, for her one-woman stage show ‘From Fairly Vocal to Varifocal‘.

Book Clare

• For a comedy performance (songs and stand-up)
• To perform a full-length theatre show of comedy and songs
• For a presentational talk – where she speaks about her work based on interviews with older LGBTQ folk, or lesbian and gay asylum seekers or those who suffer from mental health issues (in which she addresses the issues involved and performs excerpts from the narrators).
• As a compere for your conference
• As a consultant on ethical concerns in verbatim theatre work

Contact claresummerskill@gmail.com for availability and fees.