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 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!

I made a pilgrimage to see Suffs at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway last month, and saw it on the 26th October, when the news was full of the US Presidential campaign.
​I was walking around the streets of Manhattan that weekend thinking of the incredible effort New York suffragists had made in the city 99 years earlier - in October 1915 - to make Votes for Women as visible as possible.

 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. 

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.

It's been a couple of months now since my job at Parliament finished - and I've been meaning to write about some of the creative outputs of my time as part of the Vote 100 team. I was part of an AHRC funded project called 'What Difference Did the War Make? World War One and Votes for Women' run by the University of Lincoln and UK Parliament Vote 100 alongside the University of Plymouth. The project outputs included three panel events in Lincoln, Plymouth and London discussing not only the project topic but the work and legacy of past and present female Members of Parliament, alongside workshops for young people, and an exhibition in Parliament and online. You can see that exhibition here: www.parliament.uk

I'm not going to talk about those outputs in this blog post though. Instead this is a brief introduction to some of the other outputs involving project research that happened over the course of my year there - outputs I'm really excited about and that reached out to different audiences in different spaces. There's music, games, theatre, and sweets!

So - it has been announced that mid noughties show The L Word is coming back, with some of the original cast involved. I have the whole run on DVD, and although I haven't watched it since it ended in 2009, it was a ground breaking series, featuring openly lesbian performers, writers, musicians, and producers. While the portrayal of lesbians on tv hasn't moved forward as much as The L Word's creator Ilene Chaiken hoped it would have done since the show, the increasing number of online communities and online spaces queer women are part of and occupy has meant conversations about visibility, diversity, intersectionality, gender identity, and accountability of the media are much more audible in public space and in activist and campaigning groups.  As many bloggers and articles have acknowledged, the portrayal of lesbians in the show will need to be much more representative of the diversity of LBT+ people than it was before in order to speak to audiences today.

The audience is certainly there! For Pride this year, I took part in the parade through London for the first time, and in some style as part of Parliout. It was fantastic fun to be on the bus and on the streets, cheering along with the crowds that lined the route. Issues around the representation of LGBT+ people in the promotional material produced by Pride in London, and concerns about the corporate take-over of Pride had been widely expressed before the march, particularly as some groups were not initially represented in the parade. While I certainly saw some dissent and protest from individuals over the course of the afternoon, seeing so many marchers from different organisations, unions, institutions and campaign groups was an undeniable joy.

In the film 'Suffragette' the character of Hugh Ellyn, played by Finbar Lynch, is described by the policemen watching his property as being part of the 'Men's League.' Married to a known militant, he has apparently previously been imprisoned for his role in the suffrage campaign, and we see him in the film helping the WSPU to organise and carry out violent militant actions. Although we never get to hear any of his story, it's good to have acknowledgement of the male support for suffrage in the film - as it's an important part of the history of the campaign.

It's not made clear in the film or production notes, but I reckon, given his militant leanings, Lynch's character is most likely to have been part of the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement (MPU). ​The MPU was directly affiliated with the WSPU, the society featured in the film 'Suffragette,' and shared their colours of purple, white and green. As well as their headquarters near Charing Cross Station in London, they had a number of regional branches across the UK, including in Eastbourne, Birmingham and Letchworth and at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. One branch, in East Grinstead, was apparently "actually the outcome of an anti-suffrage meeting there... One gentleman was so struck with the feebleness of the arguments that he proceeded to found a branch of the Men's League." 

So this month I graduated with a PhD in Drama from the University of Manchester after four years of research and study that has been a total joy. I can't believe how it much it has changed me. ​