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Studying, performing and engaging with feminist theatre from a century ago has pretty much ruined the past three years of theatre-going for me - and in many ways I couldn't be more pleased. I feel awake.
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 You might have read my blog post about the Actresses' Franchise League and their conversation with a manager of the Empress Rooms in London in 1914... If you haven't then please do by clicking here! I took advantage of the newly opened Newsroom at the British Library to look up the original story in the Daily News... hoping that it might be possible to find which member of the AFL had drawn the sketches... and discovered that Votes for Women had put a rather positive spin on the end of the story,
one which I had believed and then blogged about. Picture the scene thus:
Two Edwardian actresses meet whilst walking through Covent Garden. It's a balmy afternoon some time in autumn 1913. I've created an Actresses' Franchise League version of the popular 2048 game - it's like a sliding block puzzle game. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:  Last week the press reported negative comments made by the leader of UKIP about working women who take time off to have families - challenged about his views on working mothers he said "I can't change biology"
This old-fashioned (to be kind) and backward (to be honest) view reminded me of some equally ridiculous and sexist discrimination towards working women - in this case actresses - almost exactly a century ago... On 29th January 1914 the Actresses' Franchise League held a Tea Dance at the Empress Rooms in Kensington. It was a fundraiser for the League and as well as Tea and the Tango, there were all sorts of other entertainments, including palmistry. Well-known actresses became waitresses for the occasion to serve the tables and thereby hangs a tale... Lyn Gardner's blog in the Guardian a month ago in August 2013 was entitled "Do stage actors mumble too much?" and quoted statements by both actress Imogen Stubbs and Rada's Artistic Director Edward Kemp that deplored a "naturalistic, mumbling style" and directors who encouraged it, "believing that laidback mumbling is more truthful."
Whilst on tour in the UK in the autumn of 2009, I thought a lot about the Actresses' Franchise League, local suffrage societies across the country and the history of performers being on tour. I decided that I would speak the final speech by 'Woman' in Cicely Hamilton's 1909 play "A Pageant of Great Women" on the stage in every venue that I knew had held, or was old enough to have held suffrage meetings or performances or might have been where members of the Actresses' Franchise League performed during their careers. I chose the speech from "Pageant", not only because it's beautiful, passionate and full of hope but also because it was one of the most widely performed suffrage plays in the period 1909-1914 and so therefore the most likely to have been done in that venue or town. Some venues were particularly special to me - and being in the Theatre Royal Margate was a thrill as so many AFL members had started their careers and trained in Margate with Sarah Thorne!  As part of the centennial events around Emily Wilding Davison’s Epsom Derby protest, Kate Willoughby asked me to write a guest blog for her website. Click here to read it Kate's play TO FREEDOM’S CAUSE is currently on tour and is going to be at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden from 26th to 29th June. Click here for more information about her play 
I'm preparing at the moment for an upcoming Platform event at the National on Tuesday 25th June called 'Suffragettes on Stage'.
It's going to feature extracts from suffrage plays and a panel discussion about the work of the Actresses' Franchise League. Actresses Samantha Bond and Janie Dee are going to be on the panel with Professor Maggie Gale from the University of Manchester and myself. Baroness Genista McIntosh is chairing. Samantha Bond directed a suffrage play for me called 'Lady Geraldine's Speech' in a triple bill of the plays called 'Knickerbocker Glories' at the Union Theatre in 2010 and Janie Dee took part in the first readings of the plays with me at the Novello and Prince of Wales Theatres back in 2008 - it'll be great to have their perspectives as both politically aware working women and actresses on their Edwardian counterparts. Hopefully it's a great mix on the panel - two tip top experienced, interested and intelligent actresses, a brilliant theatre historian and a Labour peer who has been on the boards of the RSC, the NT and the Opera House… and me ;) I'll be signing copies of 'The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays' afterwards. It's going to be a fantastic afternoon and will make the point (yet again) that women's work, writing and lives need to be celebrated, talked about and respected. Especially at the National Theatre. It runs from from 2.30-4pm in the Lyttelton Theatre and tickets are £6. CLICK HERE for more info and to book Hope to see you there! |
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