‘Votes for women’ costume performance
Quakers in Pakefield put on a performance
Pakefield Friends in Suffolk performed a play-reading of a historic public meeting discussing the subject of ‘Votes for Women’.
The fully costumed performance was based on a press cutting from a 1914 edition of a local newspaper, which described a public meeting of the Women’s Suffrage Society. It was part of two Lowestoft Heritage Open Days at the Meeting house in September.
Pakefield Friends told the Friend that it was a subject on which ‘the nation, and indeed Quakers of the time, were deeply divided’. Jill Allum said: ‘The detail was such that we were able to dramatise the report quite easily, preserving the exact wording where possible. We added in a suffragette song accompanied on the fiddle by our Friend Jim O’Toole, and audience participation such as heckling, booing and cheering. As the time for the play approached, we were amazed to see visitors queuing outside in the garden.’
The play attracted about forty people and was followed by a lively discussion on ‘Are Women Equal Today?’
