Members of the Bedford Society Committee have become Hedda Bird ‘groupies’. Along, of course, with friends, professional associates and other Bedfordians.
Having attended performances of the play ‘What She Did with What She Had’, based on the founding of Bedford College by Elizabeth Jesser Reid (EJR), at the Arts Centre in Bracknell, we’ve been keen to carry on supporting Hedda’s work.
In March some of us attended performances, at the Courtyard Theatre, close to Old Street, of ‘Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts’, a play concerning the ethical issues raised by the production of cheap clothing.
More recently we were invited to the Bold Theatre in south London, which supports the development of new theatrical work, for a reading of a reworked version of the play about Elizabeth Jesser Reid. The new script brings out more dramatically Mrs Reid’s determination in the face of opposition from all sides to found a women’s college which taught such subversive subjects as biology! Afterwards we met informally with the theatre professionals involved. We discussed with them the relevance of the play’s themes to today’s younger audiences. The younger women present talked of the pressures they faced from social media, likened by one to “brainwashing”. The play’s strength, they said, lay in its authentic message about how an unknown individual like EJR, a “disrupter”, had through her determination helped to improve their own lives in the 21st century.
Following the workshop, Hedda is now working on a final draft, with support from the director Roxana Silbert and the dramaturg Pippa Hill, who were involved with the project. Hedda and her co-producer Claire Zuurbier have received interest from a couple of theatres. Fingers crossed! Two play publishers attended the reading and have expressed interest in publishing it; knowing it was going into professional production would aid that decision for them. Hedda has re-named the play ‘The Elizabeth Reid Story’ – because whenever anyone asks about it, she says ‘it’s about this amazing woman called Elizabeth Reid …’
Jennifer Glastonbury (French with German 1969), Dinah Nichols (History 1965) and Claire Daunton (History 1974)
