Grannies and Girl Power!

 Hello and Happy New Year.

I am getting increasingly excited about the year ahead as part of the Bunbanter playwrights programme. I hope to achieve a greater overall knowledge of the world of theatre, stepping outside my comfort zone of acting as well as presenting my ideas and opinions to the group and the audience in my final piece. The central concerns that I am interested in are the gender roles and power assumptions throughout society and how they have changed through the decades of time. I have always been interested in this issue and feel very strongly towards the theme of gender equality, especially in trying to equally balance the rights, expectations and opportunities offered to women as well as men. This passion for the issue has stemmed from my personal experience of being able to spend time and look up to an extremely strong and brave woman as my role model. This role model comes in the form of my Gran. Myself and my gran have an irreplaceable bond and find happiness and enjoyment out of sharing stories with each other. These stories have filled me with pride of what she achieved as a female in a more difficult time to gain equality, disappointment of how she was held back due to her sex but most of all curiosity when considering how her childhood experience would be different if she had to relive her youth now. I feel as though I have been given an opportunity to express the opinion my gran was never able to and change young girls, like my gran once was, lifestyles and how they are treated. 

Here is a photo of my cousin, my gran and myself at Christmas this year

Although I have taken part in programmes to encourage females to join STEM organisations and pursue careers in subjects like engineering and sciences which the female sex are more reluctant to do, I have never fully expressed the strong message in which I wish to do. My aim of the playwright’s programme is to communicate a powerful and inspiring message surrounding society’s adjustment which must be made to create equality within the sexes. I feel as though theatre is the most challenging but effective way of conveying issues like gender equality and I wish to overcome the challenge and change the audience’s mindsets towards gender roles and power assumptions of today.

A photo of me and some strong women who have shattered the normal expectations and joined pipe bands, which used to be heavily unbalanced with males.

One of the first plays which I have been given to read as part of the programme, “A Doll’s House” is fuelling this fire by showing me a great example of the control in which husbands had over their wives in the past. This has caused me to compare this to modern day relationships where both genders, in most cases, are equal. I find it interesting how the words in which Ibsen and Hampton chooses to use are extremely subtle to the subject of equality between the sexes and only hint towards this through their choices of language. Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian play-write, wrote the original play and was known for his influence in society at the time, even being named the “father of realism.” Also, Christopher Hampton, the British play-write, was the man behind the screenplay adaption of “A Doll’s House.” I believe both of these men are inspirational in their role as play-writes and both played a great part in empowering the female sex. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it. Any opinions or ideas surrounding any of the issues in which I discussed would be appreciated. 

Jill Watson

Jill is part of the Bunbury Banter Young Playwrights Programme 2019-2020