One woman show captures suffragette suffering
By Jayne Warren - 17/12/2006
Stories of eccentric, talented and feisty women from a previous century are rare. And for such women to become independently recognised public figures, let alone ending up in jail, is even rarer. Thankfully the story of one such woman, Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (1858-1944), has been preserved not just through her writing and compositions, but by an unique one-woman show performed by actress Gill Stoker.
Gill came across Ethel almost by chance when studying on a 2 year drama course in a new career move in her late 40s.
She says: "I was looking for material for an audition speech, trying to find something different. My husband Richard is a composer, and I remembered him occasionally mentioning a woman composer called Ethel Smyth, who apparently was quite eccentric. I found out a bit more about her, and discovered that she'd written various books of memoirs, including 'Female Pipings in Eden'. This formed the basis, not only of a 3-minute monologue for my drama course, but also turned out to be the makings of a show."
Ethel was an intriguing, larger-than-life character - an ideal subject for a one-woman show. Deemed unsuitably intense (for a girl) in her early studies by her family, the teenage Ethel went on a protracted and progressively more severe strike, finally confining herself to her room and refusing to attend meals, church, or social functions unless her father would send her to Leipzig to study composition.
After two years the embattled Major Smyth gave in, and Ethel went to Leipzig, where her larger-than-life personality found an aesthetic outlet. She gained some recognition in England with the performance of her Mass in D for chorus and orchestra in 1893, and struggled to get her operas performed. A woman of boisterous vitality who fell prey to inconvenient passions for persons of both sexes, Smyth was affectionately caricatured in EF Benson"s Dodo novels and mocked by Virginia Woolf.
She knew some of the famous people of her day, and wrote about them, including the Empress Eugenie (widow of Napoleon III), and Queen Victoria. She also spent two years assisting Mrs Pankhurst in the Votes for Women campaign, and wrote the suffragettes' famous hymn, 'March of the Women'. Said Gill: "It's a rousing song, which I sing in the show, conducting with a toothbrush - just as Ethel did from the window of her Holloway prison cell."
In the show Ethel is in her 70s, sorting through a box of 'junk' in the hope of being able to throw a few things out. But every object she takes out of the box triggers off a memory: her birth certificate reminds her of how her father opposed her wishes to study music in Leipzig; a bag of old stones reminds her of how she trained Mrs Pankhurst in the not-so-gentle art of stone throwing, prior to the great window-breaking campaign that led to over 100 women being imprisoned in Holloway.
She reads out sniffy review clippings asking whether a woman could ever make a great composer, followed by a letter of praise from George Bernard Shaw after a successful performance of her oratorio, the Mass in D.
Gill adds: "Having seen lots of photos of Ethel, I knew that I looked a bit like her. I even had an old tweed suit of the kind she used to wear! She also used to wear a man's cravat or tie, so I borrowed a nice orange tie from my husband, teamed it up with a cream-coloured blouse, found a rather frumpy pair of flat lace-up shoes, and my costume was complete!
Ethel found her time in prison a powerful experience of communal determination and sacrifice by women of all ages and classes. "2008 will mark the 150th anniversary of her birth, and I'm hoping that there will be lots more concerts and operas containing her music. She has been featured in the past on BBC Radio 3's 'This Week's Composer', but her music could be heard much more widely, and more regularly."
So far Gill has performed her show called "Essentially Ethel" for U3A groups in Bromley, Harrow and Hounslow, and gave three performances this year for Duchy Opera in Cornwall, with more bookings to come.
If you would like to book Gill's show, either for an organisation or for private performance, go to the link below to see clips and photos. Or call Gill on 0208 852 9608.