Swale / Jeary Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings

A guide for studying and staging the play
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78001-906-2
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Reihe: Page to Stage study guides

Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings is the empowering and surprising story of four young women fighting for their right to a university education in a world that assumed women belonged at home. First produced professionally at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013, and a sell-out success, it is now regularly performed by theatre groups in the UK and beyond, and widely studied by GCSE Drama students. This Page to Stage guide, written by the playwright, who also directed the first production at RADA, along with her assistant director Lois Jeary, is packed with contextual information, scene-by-scene and character breakdowns, and personal insights into the world of the play and the real lives that inspired it. An invaluable resource for those studying and staging the play, it takes you through the entire production process, considering each of the elements in turn, from sound and music to design and rehearsals. You'll also find notes from the original rehearsal process, extracts from working diaries, and interviews with key members of the creative team. Throughout, there are hints and tips on staging, and helpful games and exercises to bring the play to life on the stage and in the classroom. Highly accessible and uniquely authoritative, it is the indispensible guide for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.

Jessica Swale is a writer and director, and the Artistic Director of Red Handed Theatre Company. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe and won her a nomination for Most Promising Playwright in the Evening Standard Awards 2013. Other plays include Nell Gwynn and Thomas Tallis (both Shakespeare's Globe); All's Will That Ends Will (Bremer Shakespeare Company); adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, Sense and Sensibility (Watermill Theatre), The Secret Garden (Grosvenor Park) and The Jungle Book (UK tour 2017 & 2018); and an original play, The Mission, about illegal adoptions in the 1920s. She has directed a number of award-winning productions for Red Handed, which is dedicated to creating new work and rediscovering forgotten plays. Recent productions include The Rivals starring Celia Imrie, the London premiere of Palace of the End by Judith Thompson, and the first major revival of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem, which won her a nomination for Best Director at the Evening Standard Awards. Other direction includes Bedlam (Shakespeare's Globe); Sleuth (Watermill); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); Winter (TNL, Canada); The Busy Body, Someone to Watch Over Me (Southwark), The School for Scandal (Park Theatre); and productions at RADA and LAMDA. She was Max Stafford-Clark's Associate Director at Out of Joint from 2007-2010. She is an associate artist with Youth Bridge Global, an international NGO which uses theatre as a tool for promoting social change in war-torn and developing nations. She is the author of A Year of Creative Thinking: 366 Daily Inspirations for Writers and Artists (Nick Hern Books, 2025) and has written three titles in Nick Hern Books' popular Drama Games series: Drama Gamesfor Classrooms and Workshops, Drama Gamesfor Devising, and Drama Gamesfor Rehearsals. Author photo by Michael Wharley

Autoren/Hrsg.

Swale, Jessica

Jeary, Lois

Leseproben

The World of the Play

Blue Stockings is set in 1896–7 – a time when Queen Victoria was on the throne, the colonies of the British Empire spread from Newfoundland in the northern hemisphere to New Zealand in the southern, and only men who owned or rented property above a certain value had the right to vote.

In terms of both the law and the way society viewed them, Victorian women were second-class citizens; so the women in this play have a great deal to fight against, if their aim is to be taken seriously as intelligent citizens who might like the chance to work.

Understanding the historical context is crucial to telling the story of the play. Although the play is firmly set in Victorian England, there is a contrast between the expectations this sets up and the way its female characters behave. They are not your typical Victorians, and therein lies the drama. They are women who defy the conventions of their time; Jessica says the characters are ‘bursting out of their corsets – trying to move forward before their peers have caught up. It is important that, whilst they inhabit a Victorian world, the women’s energies and sensibilities are ahead of their time. That’s where the interesting juxtaposition lies.’

The actor, director or designer’s primary task is to interpret and bring to life the characters and text. Blue Stockings features both real and fictional characters and incidents, so thoughtfully applied research can illuminate those interpretations. Everyone uses research in different ways and, although some might do it purely for their own information, establishing ways to share findings amongst a cast ensures that everyone works from the same starting point.

In rehearsals, Jessica often gives each cast member a particular topic to research and then asks them to present their findings to the rest of the company, so that all can share in building the world of the play. It is important that actors choose a topic that relates to their character so that the research is useful rather than simply academic. Jessica also encourages actors to find a playful, fun, inventive way of sharing their findings, rather than simply giving a talk full of dry information. They may present it in an exercise, as a playlet or as a chat show. When rehearsing Hannah Cowley’s eighteenth-century comedy of manners The Belle’s Stratagem, they even had one research session that spoofed an episode of Made in Chelsea! The more palatable and active the information becomes, the more it will go in.

Here is a list of suggested research topics, followed by an introduction to some key themes:

• The history of Girton College – including Elizabeth Welsh and her predecessor, Emily Davies.

• The daily routine at Girton.

• The riot and the vote on women’s graduation rights.

• The role of a university lecturer at Cambridge.

• What courses consisted of at Cambridge.

• What social lives were like in Cambridge.

• The geography of Cambridge – the town, the locations in the play, and what there was to do.

• Social class at Cambridge and beyond.

• Famous Cambridge students and their experiences.

• The science of the play, and astronomy in particular.

• Hysteria – the study of it and what people believed about it.

• Relationships – marriage, courting and expectations.

• Suffrage.

• Politics of the 1890s.

• Arts of the 1890s.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

‘Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held.’1

Florence Fenwick Miller, in a speech at the National Liberal Club, 1890

The women in Blue Stockings defy society’s expectations of them. In order to communicate this spirit and zeal, actors need to have an understanding of what those historical constraints were. It is also helpful to appreciate that the play is set in a time when the position of women in society was starting to shift and campaigns for women’s rights were gathering momentum.

The nineteenth century was a time of division between the sexes that crystallised in the doctrine of men and women occupying separate spheres. The man’s role was considered to be engaging in public and economic life – going out to work, being the wage earner and representing the family in matters of law or politics. Meanwhile, the woman’s place was in the home with all its attendant domestic responsibilities, such as cooking, needlework and, perhaps most importantly, raising children. As the morally superior and yet physically weaker sex, middle-class Victorian women were to be shielded from the corrupting influence of society at large.

This was demonstrated through the rights that women were afforded. Before the 1880s, when a woman married, her property passed to her husband’s ownership and her individual legal identity ceased because she and her husband were considered to be one person under the law. In 1857, an Act of Parliament had made it easier for married couples to obtain a divorce; however, it ensured that doing so was much easier for men than women. For a man to obtain a divorce he needed only to prove that his wife had been unfaithful; for a woman to get a divorce she had to prove her husband’s infidelity and cruelty. Historically, the custody of children also passed to men. That had gradually started to change from 1839 onwards, when women started to acquire rights of access and custody for children in certain cases; however, a husband essentially retained rights over his wife’s body and the products of that ownership, which included children.

Many of those gradual gains in the legal status of women resulted from organised movements and campaigns. Arguably the biggest movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century was the campaign to grant women the right to vote. At the start of the century only a small percentage of wealthy men were entitled to vote; as the years went on, however, a series of reforms extended that right to more and more men. In 1866, a petition was presented to Parliament calling for women to have the same political rights as men, but the measure was defeated. Groups supporting women’s suffrage emerged across the country and in 1897 a number of them joined together to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Fawcett.

The campaign for women’s suffrage can be broadly categorised into the ‘suffragists’, who campaigned through non-confrontational means, such as petitions and public meetings, and the ‘suffragettes’, who believed that radical methods were needed to achieve results. The Women’s Social and Political Union, founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, was a militant organisation that advocated for disturbances, such as window-breaking and arson, to command the attention of the press, politicians and public.2 As a result of their actions, hundreds of women were imprisoned, and the many who went on hunger strike endured force-feeding by the prison authorities. In 1918 the vote was granted to women over the age of thirty who met certain property qualifications. Then in 1928 the franchise was extended to all women over the age of twenty-one, granting women the vote on the same terms as men.

One of the highest profile opponents of the suffragists’ cause was Queen Victoria, and the significance of her reign to attitudes regarding women’s rights must not be underestimated. She was perceived as the epitome of womanly virtue during her reign from 1837 to 1901. Despite her being the most powerful woman in the world, various comments attributed to Queen Victoria suggest that she thought women should stick to their domestic sphere. Victoria was devoted to her husband, Albert, and they had nine children together; however, when Albert died at the age of forty-two, she went into deep mourning and resisted public engagements. At that time, the Queen’s withdrawal from public life attracted criticism and added weight to arguments that women were too volatile for public office.

The nineteenth century was even harder for women at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum. Working-class women had no choice but to work, often in domestic service or factories, to support their families, yet hours were long and wages were low. Housing conditions for the poor were crowded, although the only alternative for people who could not support themselves was to go into a workhouse. Gradually, however, working women organised into groups. In 1888, women and girls working at the Bryant and May match factory in London went on strike over unfair dismissal and their working conditions; eventually their demands were met and their strike led to the formation of the Union of Women Match Makers. Occasionally women from more privileged backgrounds had to work, usually as governesses, teachers or nurses, and some of those women were to form the vanguard for women’s education.

In the first half of the century, the education of women in England was entirely piecemeal. A lucky girl may have been allowed to join her brother’s lessons with his tutor, or attend the local church school, while others may have benefited from the instruction provided by governesses, but generally girls were schooled in only those ‘accomplishments’ needed for a blissful domestic life: music, drawing, dancing and needlework. Gradually, secondary...