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.
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​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
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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