The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays is an anthology of eight exciting pieces written for and by members of the Actresses Franchise League from 1909-13. Immediately playable, they offer strong, varied roles for female casts, while also providing invaluable source material to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines.
Featuring '
How The Vote Was Won' which remains one of the most popular and well known suffrage plays, the volume also includes seven shorter works:
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Lady Geraldine's Speech' (1909), a fantastic, fun piece for actresses. Lady Geraldine hasn't thought through the Suffrage cause and, on a visit to an old school friend meets some charismatic, successful and intelligent women who soon enlighten and encourage her on to the right path!
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Pot and Kettle' (1909), a comic piece in which a young woman returns to her family in great distress having assaulted a suffragette who was sitting near her at a Anti-Suffragist meeting.
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Miss Appleyard's Awakening' about an anti-suffrage campaigner who finds herself in the home of a sympathizer but ends up inadvertently drawing her hostesses' attention to the contradictions in her arguments
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Her Vote' by the actor and playwright Henry Esmond which provides an interesting male viewpoint on the movement, criticizing the young suffragist for wanting to be part of a movement about which she seems to understand little.
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The Anti-Suffragist or The Other Side', a charming, clever monologue about a sheltered young woman who finds herself increasingly involved with her local Anti-Suffrage society and increasingly puzzled by what she learns there.
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The Mother's Meeting', an entertaining monologue that uses a working class character to expose the inconsistencies in the Anti-Suffrage arguments.
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Tradition' was first performed at a matinee for the Woman Suffrage Party held at the Berkeley Theatre in New York City on Saturday 24 January 1913.
The plays featured articulate the arguments of the Suffrage Movement through a variety of styles, both comic and serious, and perfectly illustrate the use of drama as a medium for social change and entertainment. Together with illustrations and an introduction charting the history of the Actresses Franchise League and exploring the context and provenance of the plays, this is an excellent resource for both study and performance.
Hamilton, Cicely: - Cicely Hamilton (1892-1952) was an English atress, playwright and activist. Her first job was as a pupil-teacher; disliking it, she joined a touring company as an actress. She then turned to playwriting and her first play, The Traveller Returns, was performed in 1906. Her next, Diana of Dobsons (1908), was very successful. In 1908 she joined the Women's Freedom League and wrote two propaganda plays, How the Vote Was Won (1909) and A Pageant of Great Women (1909). She was a founder member of the Actresses' Franchise League and of the Women Writers' Suffrage League. During the First World War she nursed soldiers at the Battle of the Somme and in 1917 was asked to form a repertory company to perform plays for the Allied troops on the Western Front. After the war she became a freelance journalist. She wrote a number of books, including her autobiography, Life Errant, which was published in 1935.
Paxton, Naomi: - Dr Naomi Paxton is a performer, researcherand suffrage historian. She trained at Goldsmiths College and the RoyalScottish Academy of Music and Drama, and her doctoral research, completed in2015 at the University of Manchester, explored the work of theatre professionalsin the suffrage campaign. Naomi regularlyspeaks about her research in the media and at a variety of events andfestivals, and was one of the AHRC/BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers in2014-15. She is an Associate Artist of the feminist production hub Scary LittleGirls. Her other publications include TheMethuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Stage Rights! The Actresses' FranchiseLeague, activism and politics 1908-1958 (Manchester University Press,2018).
