Blue stockings
Audition Notice-Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale
Sunday 6th June 2pm at The Stables Theatre
(playing dates: 29th October to 6th November 2021)
Due to Social Distancing guidelines, auditions will be held in 15 minute slots. Please contact Aisling Tigwell, the director via email (aislingtigwell@hotmail.co.uk) to book your slot. This is a recasting following the postponement of the play in March 2020 due to pandemic. Audition pieces have been scanned and can be read from devices during the audition or printed out. The auditions will be Covid secure.If you have any questions about the auditions or cannot make the audition date please contact me on the email address above.
Set over the academic year of 1896 to 1897, ‘Blue Stockings’ takes place in and around Girton College Cambridge. Girton, was the first college to admit women in 1869. However, whilst their male counterparts could graduate the women cannot. The women face the stigma of being called a ‘Blue Stocking’ an unnatural educated woman and not one that any man would want to marry. ‘Blue Stockings’ follows four young women and their teachers as they fight for their right to graduate alongside their male counterparts. They face prejudice, the class divide and the pressure to conform to society’s expectations of women.
Roles:
ADDITIONAL CHARACTER TO AUDITION – Carolyn Addison – playing age 20 -30
Is the most eccentric and bohemian of the Girton students. She is well travelled and frequently mentions her travels when talking to the others. She is relatively carefree and is much more willing to break and bend society’s rules. She is most affluent of the four Girton girls.
Tess Moffat – playing age 20- 30
Tess is the central character of the play. The audience see the action of the play through her eyes. She is conflicted between wanting to study science and also the desire to have children and get married. She is also not afraid to stand up for what she believes in. For example, she questions Dr Maudsley’s views around hysteria in women.
Maeve Sullivan – playing age 20-30
She keeps herself to herself and is probably the most naturally intelligent of all the Girton students. She does not come from an affluent background and is at Girton as she has a generous benefactor. When tragedy strikes Maeve, her family background is revealed and provides an emotional end to the first half of the play. It would be nice to see a regional dialect for Maeve.
Ralph Mayhew – playing age 20-30
A second year student at Trinity College, Ralph is a romantic and a scientist who falls in love with Tess. He does have sympathy towards women studying at Cambridge but ultimately he bows to pressure from his father in deciding who to marry.
Elizabeth Welsh – playing age 40+
One of only two characters in the play who actually existed, Elizabeth Welsh was mistress of Girton college. Mrs Welsh is an interesting character who is committed to the fight to allow the women to graduate and thus views the suffragettes as a distraction and discourages the girls from attending any suffragette meetings.
Miss Bott/ Mrs Lindlay – Playing age 45+
Miss Bott is the girl’s chaperone she may at first seem like she is a stickler for the rules but there is more to her than that. Mrs Lindlay runs the haberdashery shop.
