NYTimes.com: Howard Brenton’s “Anne Boleyn” was a recent hit, and this summer the director-turned-writer Jessica Swale offers another strong female-centric work with her debut play, “Blue Stockings.” This one centers not on a doomed, hapless wife, but on the fight for a woman’s right to learn.
2 comments:
It is lovely to hear about this new emphasis on women The Globe is making, although the author of this article seems more than a little critical of the shows chosen for this time, deeming them rather superficial and overdone. But what Shakespeare play isn't "overdone?" What matters is that they're putting something new into it, highlighting different areas and trying new things. The author still seems nonplussed, and even degrades the non-Shakespeare play choice as rather superficial and stereotypical, offering up nothing new. It would be nice to have a different critic's perspective on these upcoming shows; perhaps this author has some bias towards shows with powerful women or some other unknown reason to be so skeptical. At the turn of the century, it was believed by the leading doctors that women who studied too much and diverted too much of their energy toward their brains would become frail and weak, and would have trouble reproducing or have children who would be similarly pale and weak.
To show a woman's deviation from the set expectations and path of this time will help to educate people today about how different life was for women just a century ago and how much we have to be thankful for today. It seems like quite a worthwhile show, I definitely hope they do it justice.
It is good to see more historical shows still being written in this 21st century. A lot of the recent big musicals are either fairy tales or more modern age things. Blue Stockings sounds like a great show, with the women struggling for a place in the academic world. Placing it in the 1800s just makes it all the more enjoyable because they get to wear fun clothes, though from the picture I saw they wouldn't have been caught dead with their skirts above their ankles. I can't wait to break into the world of theatre, and it is good to see that the Globe is just as inspiring.
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