Picture the scene thus:
Two Edwardian actresses meet whilst walking through Covent Garden. It's a balmy afternoon some time in autumn 1913.
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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! |
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April 2023
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