Four Small Women is a solo performance piece of theatre exploring place, feminism, & 'working-class' life. Charlie is an actor & theatre-maker, having acting professional in BBC's Casualty & Centrepoint Charity Advert. She hopes to tour this show soon in Nottingham.
In a world of throwaway musicals and commercialised theatre, where has all the politically aware, ‘working-class’ drama gone to? And why is it, when we do see ‘working-class’ lives represented on stage or screen, that they are so often involved in crime, violence and drugs? This has been most recently seen in television dramas. It is as if the culture of ordinary, ‘working-class’ lives has been hijacked by gang culture, drugs culture, casual violence, sexual violence and is derided and caricaturized by comedians. Indeed, as Owen Jones puts it, the ‘working-class’ are ‘the one group in society that you can say practically anything about’ (2012, p. 2). Where is the representation of ‘working-class’ culture as something lovable, humorous and dignified?
For the purpose of this project, the term ‘working-class’ is used deliberately as so much of the time period referred to spans an era when the term was used more freely and with greater acceptance. It had not become a term of disparagement or sociologically anachronistic, and the essay, and indeed, the performance of Four Small Women is an attempt to restore its celebrated dignity within the framework of this project. Four Small Women was a practice-based research project, exploring whether ‘working-class’ drama could be still created in the contemporary world and still be portrayed sympathetically. It was based upon the lives and influence of four actual female relatives from my personal family history: Martha Adkin, my great-great grandmother, Agnes Louch, my great-grandmother, Kitty Bailey, my paternal grandmother, and Renee Price, my maternal grandmother. Apart from Kitty, who is still healthy and hearty at the grand age of 96, all of these relatives are sadly no longer with us. However, as my dramatic exploration tried to indicate, their lives still radiate throughout the years. Particularly to me. However, through my expression of their stories, I wanted to reach a universal story that belonged to all ‘working-class’ people.
Inherent in the exposition of the drama is a constant focus of ‘working-class’ lives being exploited, confined, subjected and impoverished, both materially and culturally by forces outside of their control. This focus engendered voices in the characters to express their own ‘working-class’ predicament from their own point-of-view. This gave rise to a consideration of a Marxian perspective, demonstrating a social structure where there is a presiding, dominant class. Indeed, this echoes Zipes’ comment on Benjamin’s storytelling theory that ‘one of the key roles of storytellers… is to pierce through the myths of the ruling elite in order to free people to recognise who they really are’ (2001, p. 129).The intention was to portray ‘working-class’ people on-stage, battling through the everyday hardships of life. The four small women are not participating in sensationalised narratives of drug addiction, domestic abuse, violence and other demonizing representations of ‘working-class’ life. Such damning representations, highlighted in Jones’ Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working-Class (2012) are here hopefully debunked. The intention was to capture a glance rather than dramatically propound an extensive political thesis, and it seeks to show a kinship, a thematic political correlation between the past and present ‘working-class’ experience.
