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Stage women, 1900–50 explores the many ways in which women conceptualised, constructed and participated in networks of professional practice in the theatre and performance industries between 1900 and 1950. A timely volume full of original research, the book explores women’s complex negotiations of their agency over both their labour and public representation, and their use of personal and professional networks to sustain their careers. Including a series of case studies that explore a range of well-known and lesser-known women working in theatre, film and popular performance of the period. The volume is divided into two connected parts. ‘Female theatre workers in the social and theatrical realm’ looks at the relationship between women’s work – on- and offstage – and autobiography, activism, technique, touring, education and the law. Part II, ‘Women and popular performance’, focuses on the careers of individual artists, once household names, including Lily Brayton, Ellen Terry, radio star Mabel Constanduros, and Oscar-winning film star Margaret Rutherford. Overall, the book provides new and vibrant cultural histories of women’s work in the theatre and performance industries of the period.

This chapter explores how members of the Actresses' Franchise League displayed their support for the suffrage movement in public space, and how such displays were an important and highly visible public and private strategy that encouraged collective action and activism and saw League members campaign directly on the streets, particularly through processions and the selling of suffrage newspapers. The plays and articles that emerged as part of this visibility give a new perspective on how actresses interacted with the public and how they reflected upon it themselves, and this chapter looks in detail at how interactions between the public and suffragists were absorbed into the performative strategies of the campaign, both on stage and in print. This chapter also details the way the theatrical newspaper the Era represented the campaign and the League to its readership.

This chapter examines the participation of the Actresses' Franchise League in large immersive indoor suffrage exhibitions, fairs and bazaars, introducing their work within the context of the performative propaganda strategies of the wider suffrage movement and its interventions in public visually oriented space. Beginning with a particular focus on the WSPU Women’s Exhibition of 1909, this chapter considers representations of women and womanhood in suffrage plays and entertainments and how theatre and performance was used to explore issues of violence, imprisonment and activism.

This chapter explores the work of the Actresses' Franchise League in the 1920s and 1930s and during and after the Second World War, including the formation of the Women’s Adjustment Board and the role of the League in the Equal Pay Campaign of the 1950s. Showing the organisation to be continuously part of feminist strategies of social change before, through and after the war, this chapter explores and reflects upon the growth and diversification of the League’s areas of interest and influence, and the new generations of professional performers who became involved in the organisation. This chapter takes the story of the League up until 1958, considers the legacy of half a century of activism, political campaigning and collaboration, and details how the League has been written out of histories of theatre, and of political theatre in particular.

This chapter looks at actresses who were involved in militant actions, both non-violent and violent, narratives and experiences of radicalization, arrest and imprisonment, and the suffrage plays in which representations of militant women and militancy appear. It also investigates in detail the debates within the Actresses' Franchise League regarding militant tactics and the politicization of private and public support for direct action in all forms. This chapter considers the wider context in which negative stereotypes of militant and feminist women stereotypes were reinforced and how the Actresses' Franchise League and others in the suffrage movement attempted to appropriate them as part of their own campaign.

This chapter begins with the development of the Actresses' Franchise League’s Woman’s Theatre project and its first season in 1913, and considers the idea in the wider context of similar European and American initiatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The chapter then investigates the work of the organisation and its satellite schemes during the First World War, with particular focus on the Women’s Emergency Corps and the British Women’s Hospital Fund. It finishes with an exploration of the continued campaigning of the League for the Equal Franchise between 1918 and 1928, and the work of members within new organisations like the Six Point Group.

This chapter investigates the professional networks that were a vital part of the formation and success of the Actresses' Franchise League, and campaigning and sociality within the theatrical profession and the suffrage movement. The contribution of male suffragist supporters is considered in this chapter, as are suffrage plays that tackle social and political issues around low paid work, working conditions and prostitution. Representations of the sisterhood of suffrage campaigners in suffrage plays are examined, along with the role of the League in the Census Boycott of 1911, the work of suffragist actresses in variety and the links between theatre professionals in the British and American suffrage campaigns.

This book provides the first detailed account of the work of the Actresses' Franchise League, taking the story of the organisation further than ever before. Formulated as a historiographically innovative critical biography of the League over the fifty years of the organisation’s activities, this book invites a total reassessment of the League within both 20th Century industry networks and accepted narratives of the development of political theatre in the UK. Making a genuine contribution to both theatre and suffrage histories, this book looks in detail at the performative propaganda of the suffrage movement and the role of feminist actresses as activists during and after the campaign for Votes for Women. It explores the extensive networks of political and theatrical activism and social campaigning through which suffragist performers, playwrights and producers shaped their careers, and reveals how determined the Actresses' Franchise League was to be visible in public space, and to create equal opportunities for women in the theatre industry. Drawing on archival material, this book shows how members and allies of the League addressed a broad range of political and social issues through their work, how they presented and represented women and womanhood, and how the organisation, formed and embedded in the Edwardian period, diversified during and after the First and Second World Wars.