A dance-theatre performance at the Bloomsbury Festival 2023
What is your image of a 19th century woman? A doctor? An engineer? A Prison inspector? A Lawyer? In Bloomsbury, women challenged patriarchy by daring to enter professions forbidden to them. They banged on locked doors. They refused to hide their ambitions. These nineteenth century radicals broke into education, medicine, law and many ‘men only’ spaces. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman! follows three brilliant minds who insisted that a woman can be a medic, a classicist and an accountant. They teach us that the generic for human is not ‘man’.
Pascal Theatre Company collaborated with students from London Contemporary Dance School, professional actors and students from St Lawrence University on this dance-theatre performance for the Bloomsbury Festival 2023.
Written and directed by Julia Pascal
Performed at the Royal National Hotel on 22 October 2023 drawing a wonderfully diverse audience.
The performances were followed by Q & A sessions. This event forms part of Pascal Theatre Company’s Lottery Heritage Funded Project Women for Women: 19th century women in Bloomsbury
Audience feedback:
Brilliant, shocking, moving, enlightening, hilarious …history which we should all know about ….stunning choreography – extraordinary! …brought alive a kicking searing historical episode which I found fascinating and very moving.
Astonishingly pithy, punchy writing.
Excellent passionate and informative.
I thought it was a superbly crafted piece of theatre. It was very clear what the message was, but never felt overly preachy or hyperbolic. It just felt honest, serious and important. Brilliant cast and beautifully, simply presented. Bravo.
This performance is an educational and fun performance for anyone to enjoy.
The performance was impressive and very educational, it should be done more often. Important work to be seen by a wider audience.
An inspiring and joyous production and what was as thought-provoking was the feedback from the theatre team afterwards.
This event forms part of Pascal Theatre Company’s Lottery Heritage Funded Project Women for Women: 19th century women in Bloomsbury.
Selected quotes from post performance Q & A
Julia: the cast: They’re all volunteers from St. Lawrence University and the London Contemporary School of Dance, so we have a mixture. So, you can hear the American students from St. Lawrence and the other students from LCDS. They just arrived, I had no idea I’d have ballet in this, then I found two wonderful ballet dancers. Of course, in the 19th century ballet was a very modern aesthetic so I used it. It was mighty good luck to have such a diverse cast with a huge variety of experiences.
Ella (musician): I think spending time with these women’s stories and with so many women, there’s a lot of takeaway from the standpoint of being a woman. Do we need to be liked? There’s a line about ‘I like you’ ‘Well I don’t care.’ Why do you think we need to be liked as women? What does that stop us from doing? And, in the section where the song Jerusalem is explored, it’s all about finding your voice. I’m curious now, do I know my voice?
..Working with all these women and being able to feed each other strength through shared experience and shared frustration. Those conversations were incredibly empowering
Jon (Judge): I think what’s great about this piece is that it’s not ‘women are great and men shit,’ it’s women and men have to find a way of working through the last hundreds and hundreds of years of inequality and finding a space where we can share that space equally. I do think more men should see this work.
Nadya (Eliza Orme): We’re women of different ages and generations we can all bring that into it, our experience today, your experience is very different to mine. And connecting to get the relevance of things going on in the past. I think it sometimes can be hard to connect to the gravity of these topics because we do take a lot of this for granted now. I went to uni, I didn’t have to think about how am I going to fight to go – I was allowed.
Leila (Sophia Jex Blake): I think because you’re talking about such a heavy subject, you bond so quickly that it’s so natural, even if disagree on everything else, to come together on this one thing because, of course you do. There’s definitely a lot of parts of the play that resonate with each of us equally.
When as women we struggle with mental health we’re seen as weak, or made to feel a certain way, made to feel stupid or whatever when, in actuality, women aren’t just complaining about doing housework because they don’t want to do housework, it’s actually taxing when that’s all they’re allowed to do.
Annalia (Production Manager/choreographer and chorus member): It’s still a thing today where women can’t just go out and enjoy themselves for their pleasure.. You would never think about a woman going out to a pub by herself because she could be endangering herself. Especially the young generation trying to navigate the new world, it is really difficult to try and grapple with the sense of freedom that we have but also, the responsibility for our bodies, and that we keep safe. So, we’ve bonded and discovered different things about ourselves and the world and reflecting through the script, the past worlds. It’s been a transformative time, especially for me.
This the first time I’ve been choreographing for a bigger cast, and for non-dancers so you have to really reevaluate what you’re used to and your teaching styles. I’m used to teaching smaller children ballet which is really easy. So, it’s a completely different way of working. I’ve learned a lot from Lesley in costume. It’s been a great learning experience to just watch everyone on their own discovery to push themselves a lot in the rehearsal process and getting to watch.
Lesley (Helen Cox): I think telling stories through the arts is empowering for performance and for audience because you can enjoy the artistic aspect of it without being clubbed over the head. And as far as rehearsing with a company, it’s just an unwritten rule, it doesn’t matter the ratio of women to men, the safe space is the rehearsal room and the telling of the story. So, Jon was brave enough to be the only man in the company but, you know, he’s a completely essential part of the storytelling because we’re all preaching to the converted so we know these issues.
It’s been great having young people thrown in at the deep end to be brave enough to tell these stories in front of an audience. But it matters to us and the stories matter. And power to Julia for always being brave enough to tell these stories and to give us a sense of ourselves and what we stand for and what we’re able to do and what we’re able to give.
Simone (Chorus): I found it very interesting to find the parallels between the art and reality. During the creative process we found that oftentimes we were dropping the ends of our lines and that’s a common thing for women to do when we’re just speaking within our society so that was interesting to train ourselves not to do that anymore.
Rosalie (Chorus):
A lot of times in society when women do speak out about their struggles, they’re shunned, they’re called crazy, or they’re even arrested. So, the fact that we had such a safe space both in the rehearsal and in the performance to express ourselves especially when we all stand up and said ‘man-made law,’ the sense of power that we felt in the unity was just unparalled.
Izzy (Chorus): I think this subject matter is a really great bite-sized depiction of a lot of the struggles that we may experience just throughout lives at any point and I think it really encapsulates that well and it’s really great to just go through that with a group and not feel afraid to just have it all out there, to feel it and just let it out and show that to an audience. So, I really enjoyed being a part of that process and it really gives a good sense of community, I feel like we feel really safe here, we feel connected in a way. I think that’s really important.
Audience member question: Given that we are still in a disappointing situation where stories like this do have to be told in ever increasingly engaging ways to try to continue to get the message over, what’s the next move for this particular piece? Is this something that would go out to schools or some other things? It has to continue somehow.
Julia: We would love to. The question is getting funding. ..I personally feel we are working with different generations of performers and they are learning and they are transferring their knowledge to others of their generation and will then go on. Only shared knowledge and our bravery and our risks through the arts because we are artists and arts is education and by sharing, by educating, by making performances and inspiring, that is an act of revolution in itself.
Audience member question: How well do you think we do nowadays in society on reeducating who takes over domestic jobs? For instance, I don’t know data for researchers, female and male researchers do really well until female researchers have children. Where do you think we are on that scale of reeducation of both jobs essentially?
Julia: I always look at where women are enabled to continue working after motherhood. in France, the state takes over the looking after children, I think it’s after something like 6 or 9 months’ that children are put into kindergarten and that is paid for by the state. That is what we should be doing, let the state pay for childcare so that women are free to work. If we want to have children and future generations to continue, which I presume we do, then the state has to pay for it. I think we should do what France is doing in Britain. Because otherwise women are always going to have to look after children which means losing time and their career position when they return to work. The law needs changing to enable women who choose to have children, to have the time to return to their careers or to study. We can’t do it on our own. Also I believe in a at least 50% female representation. And it will only change if it’s legally a quota system and if the state pays for kindergarten, and then women have to opportunity to work if they wish.
Excerpts from post-performance interview with Simone Routledge by Mary Batsie and Nick Tiedmann
Song and dance are used throughout the performance. What was your experience having to both sing and dance? How did this make you feel?
I am very used to singing, but dance was something I hadn’t been familiar with in a long time. When I was little, I used to do ballet, tap as well as jazz and it was my whole life. So, to be put into a position where I was held accountable—not even for myself, but to meet the expectations and respect of the cast—was challenging at first, but ultimately extremely rewarding in the end.
To answer the question of what it felt like, in the rehearsal process, we spoke a lot about language. Music and dance are forms of language that make your brain feel fiery in different ways than spoken word can provide. Itfelt incredible to communicate such a powerful message through many forms of communication.
Are you more curious now about women in the 19th century?
I am absolutely more curious about the perspectives and stories from untold narratives particularly those of minority groups.
Mary: I found Simone’s responses about her connection to dance extremely interesting and offered a unique insight into the performer’s experience. Inspired by her fellow cast members, Simone was able to return to a former hobby and grow in her skills as an actor. This level of passion contributed to the overall impact of the show, as each individual’s work plays a part in the execution and integrity of the performance.
Nick: One element of the performance that I was especially moved by was the component of having three younger actors represent the future generation, so hearing that the more experienced actors encouraged Simone to elevate her performance added an entirely additional layer of complexity and depth to the production. This experience clearly was very meaningful for Simone, and it was inspiring to find out how it provided her an opportunity to revisit a former passion of hers.
Nadya’s reflection on the project:
As a performer in Julia Pascal’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, I learned much about history, and making creative and layered theatre. The subject matter of the work was raw, real and important. Centring around the lives of three women during the late 19th Century, these stories are still incredibly relevant today in terms of gender politics and freedom both in England and across the world.
The Q&A after the performance was also highly engaging and opened up an important dialogue about the modern woman’s role and status.
Julia worked in a way that drew out the unique skills of each performer and she invited collaboration amongst the group. By integrating many art forms, I feel we were able to tell the women’s stories in a dynamic, accessible and entertaining way.’
Ella’s reflection
I was the musician for “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman”, incorporating music and rhythm sections into the performance with violin, clarinet and tap. Before the start of the rehearsal period, Julia sent me pieces to learn or use as reference for music in the play, which we then explored together with the script over a few sessions. I developed rhythms and singing rounds to teach the dancers, inspired by reference material. Closer to rehearsals, I also received compositions by Sequoia Ralph to add to my repertoire. Once rehearsals began, I provided music for the devising process and taught the dancers short songs and rhythms for the piece, also helping them with movement relevant to the music, such as teaching them to conduct correctly. This was such a wonderful experience and I learned so much about developing theatre using multiple skill sets. This was also the first time that I had taught any music and I really enjoyed exploring that side of the role. Having not been to music college, it is rare for me to find opportunities that enable me to perform music and this was such a wonderful experience to add to my resume as a musician. It was wonderful to be able to connect with so many other creatives throughout this process, expanding our networks for our careers going forward.
This event forms part of Pascal Theatre Company’s heritage project: Women for Women: 19th Century women in Bloomsbury WOMEN FOR WOMEN – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)