Week Three – Dreadnought Workshop

Instead of our normal college day, this Thursday we completed a Dreadnought Workshop,
led by Natalie McGrath. We began with a discussing venturing around the question of
“What would you walk across the country for six weeks for?“ The answers for this ranged
from dance competition to money and fame but it was our first link to the matches that
the Suffragettes would go through and endure for their cause.

"Founded in 2012, Dreadnought South West is an organisation that connects individuals

and communities – through the telling and keeping of great and courageous stories about
women that have lain undiscovered and often untold.
Our Purpose is to advance the education of the public, and in particular but not exclusively
women and girls, in the role of women in society from both an historical and a modern day
perspective, in particular by using the medium of the arts.
We do this by working collaboratively with artists, historians, singers, songwriters,
writers, actors, designers, journalists, producers, directors, dancers, choreographers,
administrators, curators, facilitators and more. Our partners and supporters include arts
based and non-arts based organisations, groups and individuals."
http://dreadnoughtsouthwest.org.uk/about/who-we-are/
We next went around the class and went through names, before each explaining a piece
of clothing that means something to us. I decided to speak about my earrings because
they were my first pair and I never take them out anymore, to save me time in the
mornings.

Each of us then were given a piece of paper, to write down one word on which the
suffragettes bring to our minds. After writing this down, we were to put it in a jar with
everyone else’s. The word that first came to my mind was movement because of how all
the Women worked together for their cause.
We then began a focus on a play called Oxygen, written by Annie Kenny, which was
loosely based on her experiences. Going around the class, we read the last line one by
one, before a read through once going down the lines with each person speaking a line
until we reached the end of the scene.
"Natalie McGrath is a playwright and Co-Director of Dreadnought South West. She wrote
Oxygen for Dreadnought’s centenary celebrations of the Great 1913 Women’s Suffrage
Pilgrimage. Oxygen toured from Land’s End to London in 2013, starting at St. Just Town
Hall, and finishing at the Orange Tree, Richmond."
This scene, played a lot like the events of Black Friday. This worked especially well, as the
script was written in the style of Brecht theatre and so, made the scene stand out on its
own. A Brecht theatre style is when the scenes can work on their own, almost like an
episode of a tv show.
"Black Friday was a suffragette demonstration in London on 18 November 1910, in which
300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to secure
voting rights for women. The day earned its name from the violence meted out to
protesters, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.
During campaigning for the January 1910 general election, H. H. Asquith, leader of the
Liberal Party, promised to introduce a Conciliation Bill to allow a measure of women's
suffrage in national elections. When he was returned as prime minister, a cross-party
conciliation committee of pro-women's suffrage MPs proposed legislation that would have
added a million women to the franchise; the suffrage movement supported the legislation.
Although MPs backed the bill and passed its first and second readings, Asquith refused to
grant it further parliamentary time. On 18 November 1910, following a breakdown in
relations between the House of Commons and House of Lords over that year's budget,
Asquith called another general election, and said that parliament would be dissolved on
28 November.
The WSPU saw the move as a betrayal and organised a protest march to parliament from
Caxton Hall in Westminster. Three hundred women were met outside the Houses of
Parliament by lines of police and crowds of male bystanders, who reportedly attacked the
women for the next six hours, punching and kicking them; many women complained about
the sexual nature of the assaults, which included having their breasts twisted and pinched.
Police arrested 4 men and 115 women, although the following day all charges were
dropped. The conciliation committee were angered by the stories, and undertook
interviews with 135 demonstrators, nearly all of whom described acts of violence against
the women; 29 of the statements included details of sexual assault. Calls for a public
inquiry were rejected by Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.

The violence may have caused the subsequent deaths of two suffragettes. The
demonstration led to a change in approach: many members of the WSPU were unwilling
to risk similar violence, so they resumed direct action, such as stone-throwing and
window-breaking, which afforded time to escape. The police also changed their tactics;
during future demonstrations they tried not to arrest too soon or too late."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(1910)

We then split in to two groups and each group was given a block, to recreate our own
version of this scene. Our main point of the task was to focus on how we wanted to
present it. Each group was given 10 to 15 minutes to bring together their piece by editing
and rehearsing, I was put in a group with Alice, Katie, Anya, Jack and Bobbi.
 We showed the supporting side of the protest by holding up their side of the argument
and joining in with the speech, with the against side heckling them. To add texture to the
scene, we started at first with only one voice speaking and then added in another and
another, as the scene ran along. The other group performed back first and then we
performed our scene and filmed it.
*The person who had this video couldn’t get it to me, as it wouldn’t send*

We were then asked to put another word in the jar, that the scene allowed us to adapt
what we think now about suffragettes, I decided that my word would be Proud. I decided
on this word, as they stood up for what they believed in and they weren't ashamed to
voice their thoughts.
We then moved on to a task centred around a song from the end of the play 'The Cause'
also by Dreadnought, that hasn’t been composed yet and we began, in groups, making it
in to a spoken word piece. This was sung by the third and final character in the show,
called Trumpet, who over the duration of the show watches over Millicent and Emmeline.
He serves as, a way to liven up the dialogue and a bridge between the audience to the
characters.

I was put in a group with Anya, Katie and Alice for this and we decided to set our spoken
piece in the round. We began by editing the script to suit our ideas and mainly included
repetition in our piece to help it sink in to the audience's head more.
*Same issue with the last video*

We then went around the class, performing back what we had been able to create in the
time given and filmed each piece. Before moving on to the next task, we put a new word
in to the jar that this last scene made us reflect upon. I chose to put in the word
confliction because that how the two sides would react.
We then moved on to an earlier scene in The Cause, featuring the two lead characters
Millicent Fawcett (the Suffragist leader) and Emmeline Pankhurst (the Suffragette leader).
In this scene, Pankhurst is 55 and has been campaigning for 40 years and is now on the run
from the Cat and Mouse act after 9 days of hunger strike. Whereas, Fawcett is 66 and has
been campaigning peacefully since the age of 14 and doesn’t want Pankhurst to die
because she believes that there is another more Suffragist way.

The scene uses no dashes, like the earlier explored scene but instead uses shorter lines to
create Staccato, with the only use of punctuation being a question mark to enforce more
of an emphasis on the question. This leaves the scene being ore poetic, fluid and
rhythmical.

Pankhurst and Fawcett originally worked together until the militant WSPU was created,
leading to events such as Annie Kenny spitting in a policeman's face and being the first
Suffragette to commit a militant act worthy of jail. This leaves the scene with a tension, as
the two main characters show the two sides of the same cause.
Three pairs were chosen to read through this scene, with Katie, Jude and me reading for
Emmeline and Alice, Jack and Anya reading for Millicent. We noticed after reading
through that when the boys read through the scene they emphasised the words
differently to the girls.
This final script arose the question of, in this circumstance who would you be? I believe
that with the treatment shown to the women I would be angry enough to result to
militant actions and would be on the Suffragette's path to victory and change.
To finish the session, we brought out the jar and each picked out a word from it. We were
then to stand upon a box and speak continually for a minute about this word, this showed
how articulate that they needed to be, even when being heckled and shouted at.
We ended the session by asking Natalie some questions about how she got to where she
is. I wrote down her answers in note form, to get down as much of what she was saying as
possible.

Questions:
How did you begin writing?
Older/younger playwriter - didn’t start writing until her mid-thirties - she joined a project
with caused her to start writing - opportunities began to open up during her mid-twenties

As a writer; when you look at actors to see that they are right? What do you look for?
Lucky to have been involved in the audition process, not all writers are, with what she’s
doing, two of the actors have been with her from the start, write a letter on why they
would be interested in working in this project, punctuality, how you commit to a project.
If you are asked to sing at an audition, choose a song appropriate to the project that you
are auditioning for, be open as possible, take direction from the director, don’t be
doormats. Being an actor is about listening as well as speaking, being flexible, be yourself.