Blue Stockings 

by Jessica Swale

Directed by Ralf Togneri

Studio:      14 to 18 February 2023 @ 7:30

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This is a joyous play.

 

It has humour, sadness, risque dancing and singing too!

 

It tells the story of four young women who arrive at Girton College in Cambridge in 1896 and the five young men, who arrived the year earlier at one of the men only colleges, that they meet.

 

There is first love; sadness; grief. There is fun; enjoyment; courage.

 

All this is set against a background of the struggle for women's education to be recognised by the University authorities by them awarding degrees to women.

 

If you were a young woman at university in the 1890s your college would be well away from the main men's colleges where the lectures were held. You would be mocked by both male students and lecturers. You would probably sit at the back of the lecture theatre expected to quiet and not ask questions and then worse, your written work would often be rejected or go unmarked because it was the work of a woman. Compare that with now.

 

The brave staff and teachers, many male, put their careers on the line to stand by their students at the women's colleges and eventually won the right to be taken as seriously as men.

 

In the wider world beyond the play it is the time of female suffrage with suffragists and suffragettes striving for the right for women to vote .

 

These young women had to fight against the prevailing attitudes, not only at universities, but throughout society that women's place was in the home!

 

They all appear in this gloriously crafted piece of theatre.

 

Come. Laugh. Love. Shed a tear. Honour their struggle. Cheer for their success.

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