"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. 

​This was an unexpected find!
Musical comedy darling and Noel Coward's long time friend, performing partner and muse Gertrude Lawrence dressed up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan for a comedy number in the revue "Rats!" which ran from February to September 1923 at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End.

The lyrics were written by Ronald Jeans, and music by Philip Braham. The publicity for the show, as in the image from The Sketch above, mentioned Lawrence's name as she was very much the top billed performer alongside a talented cast that included Norah Blaney and Gwen Farrar, and Alfred Lester, but the programme for the show lists that particular song as being performed by Velma Deane and Company.

Since first finding and falling in love with Liza Lehmann's musical settings of some of the Behind the Nightlight stories in June this year, it's been an adventure bringing them to the stage! 

So some thanks are in order:

• to Edward Picton-Turbervill for meeting with me after the Radio 3 recording and going through the pieces, and Tom Carradine for recording some backing tracks to experiment with
• ​to the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society and Lose Your Marbles Comedy for allowing me to experiment with The Blue Gueeze at their new material nights
• to Sarah Rose and Dusty Limits for saying yes to the idea of the Being Human Festival event
• to the Being Human Festival, and the CAA, RCSSD, Muriel Matters Society, and Francis Routh Trust for making the BH event possible
• to Janie Dee for her creative directing
• to Melinda Hughes for inviting us to Chelsea Arts Club
• to Brydges Place and David at the Museum of Comedy 
• to my agent Georgi at Gag Reflex Management 
• to the many friends who have been supportive and enthusiastic! Thank you all.

The whole show continues to evolve and I'm thrilled to have been able to include research as well as other music by Liza Lehmann in the show, including a piece from her score for the 1904 West End hit "Sergeant Brue" and one of the songs from her "Nonsense Songs from Alice in Wonderland" series from 1911. 

The next performance is on the 29th January at Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly Circus - here's the link: www.brasseriezedel.com/events/ada-campe-behind-the-nightlight-quaint-beasts-in-an-edwardian-nursery/?instance_id=1855088

Recently had some sad news that playwright Kate Kerrow has died after a long illness. We were friends and colleagues for over a decade and met through the feminist production hub Scary Little Girls. As a feminist writer Kate was interested in my research into suffrage theatre, and when I created the Stage Rights! living literature walk with Scary Little Girls to promote my first edited collection of suffrage plays in 2013, it was wonderful to commission a monologue from her about the 1911 Census boycott. 

I'm thrilled to report that sightings of the excellent card game Suffra-Greats! have been reported most recently in the retail outlets of the Houses of Parliament, the Museum of London Docklands, and also Beamish the Living History Museum! While  the majority of Votes for Women themed merchandise is only available in the WSPU colours of purple, white, and green, Suffra-Greats! represents 18 different suffrage societies and 30 campaigners including suffragists, suffragettes, women and men.

I'm so glad that this game, created in collaboration with Clavis and Claustra and launched at the National Theatre, is still reaching new audiences.

If you see it in the wild please do let me know - you can tag me on Instagram @naomi.paxton or on BlueSky @naomipaxton

For the full story of Suffra-Greats! see my blog post here

I was delighted to be invited by the National Army Museum to speak about the First World War and Votes for Women - a stimulating start to the year made even more enjoyable by the fact that all the tickets to attend in person sold out!

It was great to revisit the research from the What Difference Did The War Make? project I was part of in UK Parliament in 2017-2018 and to add some content from subsequent and ongoing archival explorations. I knew that the NAM had hosted a talk by Wendy Moore in 2020 about the Endell Street Military Hospital, and that she had also published recently about the life of Actresses' Franchise League and WSPU member Vera 'Jack' Holme, so I included mentions of both.

I also introduced key wartime projects by the AFL that are lesser known, such as the Women's Emergency Corps, the British Women's Hospital Fund, and the Woman's Theatre Camps Entertainments, and spoke about the presence and influence of theatrical suffragists in wartime initiatives organised by activist women including the Shakespeare Hut, and the Scottish Women's Hospital. It was great to share my research in this way, and to bust a few pervasive myths about the suffrage campaign in WW1!

 That's the first verse of The Awakening by American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, set to music in January 1911 by composer Teresa del Riego.
​​
​I discovered del Riego’s name when looking for histories of women composers at the Proms and cross-referencing the names with my research into the work of Edwardian theatre and entertainment professionals who supported the Votes for Women campaign. 

More archive fun!

Ernest Hutchinson's 1913 short play Votes for Children has intrigued me since I first read the manuscript in the LCP Collection at the British Library.  Described with some glee in the LCO Readers Report as "a lively skit upon the agitation of female militants for votes", the piece is set in the offices of the fictional CSPU - the Children's Social and Political Union - and requires a mixed cast of children and adults. Hutchinson subtitles the play "A Comedy of the Future", and in this futuristic world children are campaigning for the right to vote at age six, the Prime Minister is a woman, and her husband who is the Home Secretary has been kidnapped by the leader of the CSPU, their daughter Rosabel. ​

You may be familiar with accessing books, archive collections, or microfilms at the British Library, but it can be daunting to look for and order play manuscripts if you haven't done so previously.

The staff in the Manuscripts reading room are really helpful, but I thought a users guide for any first-time researchers wanting to look in the Lord Chamberlain's Plays Collection might be useful so that you know what to expect and ask for. So here we go:

In April 2022 I was in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection researching the London cabaret scene of the early to mid twentieth century when I saw this face peeking out at me from an open folder of programmes and cuttings. I was immediately intrigued! The full picture was, I assumed, a publicity shot for a cabaret act, a play, or perhaps even a film.

Another curio from the Lord Chamberlain's Plays Collection - a sketch performed at the Lewisham Hippodrome in April 1913 and set at an unnamed London Underground station, in which the Devil (later revealed to be a medical student in costume as Mephistopheles) and his wife (later revealed to be a nurse in costume as a Folly) are waiting for either a tube train or an airship to take them home. About halfway through the piece the Devil brags to a Policeman that he is inciting militant suffragettes to commit violent crimes. As he is getting arrested a suffragette runs in, puts something into a handily adjacent post box that sets it on fire, shouts "Votes for Women" and runs off, pursued by the Policeman. There's a reference to the Devil's wife being a hunger-striker too. Curious!

Reading Sixteen - 17th December 2020

'Our Own Twelve Anti-Suffragist Reasons', 'Why We Oppose Pockets for Women', and 'Fashion notes: Past and Present' from Are Women People? by Alice Duer Miller (1915)

Prologue for a Women's Theatre by Israel Zangwill (1911)

Women Do Not Want It by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1897)

'Cautionary Tales in Verse' from Votes for Women, 6 October 1911

Readers: Maggie Saunders, Sajeela Kershi, John Fleming, Catherine Harvey Green, Annie Walker, Philippa Ritchie, Sarah McCourt, Jamie Newall, Sarah Annakin, Lucy Stevens, Jemma Churchill, Stephanie Fayerman. 


Reading Seventeen - 26th January 2021

10 Clowning Street by Joan S. Dugdale (1913)

Little Jane and Grandmama and Fair Play by Lorimer Royston (1914)

Readers: Jemma Churchill, Bronwyn Elizabeth, John Fleming, Luke Meredith, Genevieve Swallow, Catherine Harvey Green, Lucy Stevens, Maggie Saunders, Annie Walker, Jamie Newall, Sarah Annakin, Philippa Ritchie, Sarah McCourt. 

Reading Nine - 15th October 2020

Supposing by Sewell Collins (1913)

The First Actress by Christopher St John (1911)

Readers: Sarah Annakin, Nick Dutton, Stephanie Fayerman, Maroussia Frank, John Fleming, Catherine Harvey Green, Michelle Kelly, Sajeela Kershi, Sarah McCourt, Charlotte Moore, Jamie Newall, Bobbie O'Callaghan, Philippa Ritchie, Maggie Saunders, Velma Von Bon Bon, Annie Walker, Faye Wilson

Reading Six - 8th September 2020

Her Will by Christopher St John (1914)

At the Gates by Alice Chapin (1909)

Readers: Caroline Cooke, Stephanie Fayerman, Emma Fenney, Sarah Ford, Lucy Frederick, Kathryn Martin, Charlotte Moore, Jamie Newall, Bob Sinfield, Alison Skilbeck, Lucy Stevens, Genevieve Swallow

Reading Three - 11th August 2020
​
Jack and Jill and a Friend by Cicely Hamilton (1911)

Votes for Children by Ernest Hutchinson (1913)

Readers: Rob Bond, Kudzanayi Chiwawa, John Fleming, Maroussia Frank, Lucy Frederick, Mark Huckett, Charlotte Moore, Jamie Newall, Bob Sinfield, Lucy Stevens, Genevieve Swallow, Velma Von Bon Bon, Annie Walker

Reading Two - 4th August 2020

A Woman's Influence by Gertrude Jennings (1909)

Might is Right by Netta Syrett (1909)

Readers: Rob Bond, Jemma Churchill, Stephanie Fayerman, John Fleming, Charlotte Moore, Maggie Saunders, Lucy Stevens, Genevieve Swallow, Annie Walker, Ben Wendel, Velma Von Bon Bon, Sarah-Louise Young

Part of the joy of research is finding surprises in archives, newspapers, autobiographies and ephemera.
Often these stories don't fit the narrative of whatever writing task is at hand at that moment and so get forgotten, but since 2017 I've been thrilled to give many of them a wider audience  on BBC Radio 3's Time Traveller series - broadcast every morning just after 10am as part of the live Essential Classics programme on Radio 3 and then subsequently collated into themes for the Time Traveller podcast. Through this series I've been able to tell over twenty stories from the past about magic, art, sport, theatre, music, dance, and of course the suffrage campaign.

In the first few months of 2012 I worked as a dresser on South Downs/The Browning Version at the Comedy Theatre in London. I was in the second year of my PhD, and also putting together the manuscript of The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays. Working in wardrobe on West End shows is intense - you're in eight shows a week and often also more for laundry calls, understudy runs, and maintenance sessions. It's also great fun - I've worked in wardrobe on nearly 30 West End shows since 1998 and been fortunate to work with and for some incredibly lovely and talented people on stage and off.

It was on that show that the idea of a suffrage themed 'top trumps' style game first came to me. I thought it would be a great way to introduce some of the amazing campaigners I was finding in my research - and talking about constantly! - to new audiences in an accessible and fun way.

My friend Greg who was then the deputy head of the wardrobe dept was super encouraging of the idea and I mocked up a set to see if it would work. It did. Since that day I've been going on and on about this idea, keen to make it happen but not knowing how to do so.

But finally - in 2018 it has! It was totally worth the wait. Suffra-Greats! is a reality.