"Cinderella" - Doris Lytton's soft shoe Side hustle

"I am energetic. I must do something in addition to play-acting...
Artists ought certainly to do something besides acting... they should have something to fall back on... they must remember that it is unusual nowadays for a play to run for a year. We cannot afford to be out of work in these days."
​Doris Lytton quoted inThe Era, 7th December 1921

As a drama student, between acting jobs, as a PhD student, between academic jobs, and now as a freelancer I've had lots of short term, part-time jobs - things that keep the bills paid but also allow flexibility. These have predominantly been in and around West End theatres - from front of house to stage door, box office, follow spot, and as a dresser for over 25 West End shows - along with other "resting" jobs include role play for student lawyers and for trainee psychiatrists, and puppeteer for a princess's birthday party (yes, really!)  So I was seriously impressed by the initiative and ambition of actress Doris Lytton who set up and publicised her own much more permanent side hustle in 1920.

Doris was born in 1893, and was moving in suffrage and feminist theatre networks from a young age - she appeared in both Cicely Hamilton's play Diana of Dobson's in 1908 and Netta Syrett's Might is Right in 1909 while she was still as a teenager, grabbing the attention of the public and press in Inconstant George at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1910. Not only a successful young stage actress, she also appeared in silent films, including The Blue Bird (1910) and The Brass Bottle (1914) and on tour in the USA in 1912/13. During WW1 she helped support the AFL's Woman's Theatre project as a programme seller for the Woman's Theatre War Relief Matinees at the Pavilion Theatre in June 1915. I was cross-checking the names of those programme sellers with my other suffrage theatre research, and became curious about Doris' life and career. 

Doris Lytton as Miss Delafield, secretary to the Secret Suffrage Society and dressed as a chauffeur in "Might is Right" by Netta Syrett, produced at the Haymarket Theatre, 1909

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