HEXENHAMMER at VAULT Festival

HEXENHAMMER is premiering at the 2023 VAULT Festival. Written and performed by Secretariat and directed by Complicité Associate Catherine Alexander, shortlisted for the Untapped Award 2022 and Barbican Open Labs. Supported by The Yard Theatre, The Theatre Deli, The Camden Peoples Theatre and The Lion and Unicorn Theatre.

A darkly comedic, new devised performance about misogyny and the online 'Manosphere' - from the witch hunts to Andrew Tate.

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 The Hammer of Witches and verbatim text found on online incel forums, HEXENHAMMER explores how men end up killing women as a way to solve their own problems. Why that hasn’t changed in the past 500 years and the uncomfortable role new technology plays from the advent of the printing press to Reddit chatrooms. 

“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 and verbatim theatre techniques 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.