Blue Stockings Theatre Production

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DIRECTOR’S NOTES Jess Swale’s play is part of a movement in contemporary playwriting: a movement and a mission to find and give voice to a history of women’s experience. So often, drama shows us the boys having all the fun, with the fights and the monologues and the complex inner lives, while the girls stand by to watch and occasionally weep. Blue Stockings is the first of a series of plays commissioned by The Globe in London to address the lack of more balanced production opportunities, and it seemed like a great fit for our ambitious, forward-thinking and clever young Mulgravians! Their hard work, enthusiasm, and enormous sense of mischief has shone through in every rehearsal, and I am hugely grateful to each and every one for making my first production at Mulgrave so enjoyable. We hope you enjoy the show and will be back to see what we come up with next...

WHAT IS A “BLUE STOCKING”? The earliest use of the phrase is contested and may go back to as early as the 1500s. However, early in the 1750s Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vasey, and other members of London’s social elite, initiated a literary society: part-book group, part-social event. It represented a substantial break in social norms for women of the time. Men were also welcome, and legend has it that one regular attendee could not afford the black, silk stockings for formal wear - he attended in plain blue stockings. Hence the nickname for the group - informal enough you could wear your everyday ‘blue stockings’.

Over time, the term became a more generic descriptor for an educated woman, and as such, also evolved into a pejorative term: to be labelled a ‘blue stocking’ was to be beyond social norms, a freak in denial of one’s ‘natural’ role in life. The play is full of quotes from actual literature of the time, representing genuine concerns for the wellbeing of women who might ruin themselves physically and mentally through their dangerous pursuit of knowledge. The events described in the close of the play, including the burning of effigies in the streets of Cambridge, are all truthful, historical events.



CAST ALICIA STEINMANN Tess Moffat

KAI LU Ralph

ALYSSA UKANI Mrs. Lind, Mr Peck & Prof Anderson

KATERINA GEORGI Minnie

AMANDA CHENG Dr. Maudsley

KOLETA KOPANAS Mr Banks

ANGELA LI Elizabeth Welsh

KYLE DESLIPPE Will

BILL JENNINGS Holmes

LUCAS NASU NIELSEN Lloyd

CINDY GAN Miss Bott

MOLLY MACHIN Carolyn

CONNOR MCARTHUR Edwards

TIANNA LAWTON Maeve

ELLYANA BAUMET Miss Blake

VANESSA TUNG Billy Sullivan & Prof Collins

EMILY PEGRAM Celia


CREW KHAYALI DHANJI Stage Manager & Assistant Director KATERINA GEORGI Assistant Stage Manager SOPHIE YANG Apprentice Stage Manager AMIN GULAMANI Props Designer/Builder JOHN LANG Lighting Designer

CONNOR WHITE Lighting Operator NICOLAAS VAN DER VORM Sound Operator AIDAN DESLIPPE, JULIE WIEBE Set/Lighting Installation Crew TUDOR ROSU, ETHAN CAU, CATERINA MANDERSON, ANGEL LIU, AMANDA NIU Running Crew

RENE SCHINDEL at The Costume Bank Costume Designer LIZA CUNNINGHAM Scenic Artist MR. SCOTT ZECHNER Production Manager DR. BEN TAIT Director

THANK YOU! This production would not have been possible without the fantastic support of many people, and our special thanks go to Natassja By, Liza Cunningham, Laura Burns, Matt Kennedy, Miles Sullivan, Mark Steffens, Michelle Noble, Nadine Pettman, Fred Pepin, Nicole Weismiller, Chengyan Boon, Nicky Minish, Langley Heritage Society, UBC Theatre Department, and the Arts Club Theatre Company.


FACT & FICTION: A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO GRADUATE Blue Stockings is a fictional story, inspired by real events. In 1897, Cambridge University held its first vote to consider whether the women who had followed identical courses to the men should be allowed to graduate. This play was sparked, specifically, by a photograph in Girton College’s archive - it is from 1897. In it, a mannequin is hoisted high on ropes above a street packed with men in boater hats. The mannequin is a girl on a bike, wearing blue stockings. She’s strung up, helpless. Nearby, students are throwing rocks and pulling down theatre hoardings. Shortly after the photograph was taken, the mannequin was paraded through the streets and then burned in a central square. Such was the strength of feeling evoked by the question of a woman’s right to graduate. If you were a young woman at university in the late 1800s, you would walk a very long way from your out-of-town college to lectures, where you’d be mocked by both students and teachers, be forced to sit at the back, and have your work left unmarked or rejected. You would often be denied entry to your lectures because you were deemed a distraction. What’s more, because universities weren’t set up to accommodate you, there were no toilets for women, so you may have had to carry a chamber pot with you, which you might use in a quiet side street. You will have been banned from the canteen in case you distracted the men. Eventually, the Senate did award women the right to graduate. In 1948.

“D E G R E E S FO R WO M E N. I T ’ S A DA N G E R O U S I D E A ” Dr. Maudsley



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