My Mother Said I Never Should (Student Editions)

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How much is My Mother Said I Never Should a personal play? To what extent did you write from your own experience? Set in Manchester, Oldham and London, My Mother Said I Never Should is a poignant, bittersweet story about love, jealousy and the price of freedom. This non-linear structure, moving around specific times and places, enables us to view the characters at various stages in their lives but also crucially imparts an ironic dimension to their statements. (Each, for instance, vows not to have children). The time device is fundamental to the play’s meaning as well as its psychological themes of guilt, evasions, resentments and eventual revelation of family secrets. Keatley has justified this: ‘I jumble time and childhood because this is not a play about the past, but about how the past continually interrupts the present and informs our present-day decisions’. She called it an Emotional Chronology, which is ‘devised to show how the emotional inheritance of women is handed down’, and also pointed out that other contemporary women dramatists such as Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels and Sharman Macdonald have employed similar time devices in their plays (Drama Student Edition, ibid.). Recently I cut my leg when out running and a kind woman took me to A&E. The doctor there asked me what I do, and what I write, and it turned out that both women had seen this play – one had read it at school 18 years before – and both loved it. That’s beautiful, the best: when a play adds to someone’s understanding of life; much more important than prizes or fame. And once on a snowy night after a production in America, an old man came up to me, took my hands, and said “Thank you, my whole married life matured tonight”. I was speechless.

Doris disapproves of her swinging in rhythm to the piano, and implies that she isn’t good enough, and that she should “be on Beethoven by now”. Doris seems ashamed of not having Christmas decorations or an Anderson Shelter, and leaves Margaret under the piano. Although the performance may have felt slightly drawn-out at times, its relevance cannot be overstated. In a society where we are more disconnected from one another than ever before, we should be all the more grateful for such a reminder of the inextricable links that connect us to our roots. What is worrying is that the cost of drama schools and colleges is so high now, we’re getting only a privileged range of young people who can afford to enter theatre. It is the voices of outsiders, especially in playwriting, which break the mould and re-invent theatre, as I did. It’s scary to do, that’s why I’ll run workshops in places in the community if I can, where there may be someone with a new voice who needs to be heard and encouraged. Much as I admire My Mother Said, I wish Rosie’s realisation of her origins came much sooner. One scene, involving the clearance of the parental home in Cheadle Hulme, clearly owes a debt to Chekhov but also goes on far too long.Find sources: "My Mother Said I Never Should"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( May 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The story progresses, not in chronological sequence, but through a succession of contrasts: adult with child, mother with daughter, daughter with mother. It suggests that the generations go round in circles, but that there is always the possibility - if you take the optimistic view - of change. The play is not at all autobiographical, none of the four characters is my age. I never write directly from my life, as I think it’s my job to be a human hoover: I listen and watch hundreds of people over time, and slowly absorb what people fear, or hope, or want to solve in their lives. I write a play as a way to explore this, and develop the characters as I write. This article needs an improved plot summary. Please help improve the plot summary. ( March 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) As parents we wrestle with how much of our own value system to pass on, and are confronted with what we’ve made of our lives, when we bring up a child, or choose not to. This is still a pivotal decision in women’s lives: look how media comment on whether women politicians, Olympic athletes, film stars, company managers etc have children or not, how they manage that or not. Men aren’t defined by this.

Since I wrote it, there are still very few plays which show women’s lives as they really are – the day to day, “ordinary” lives, not women being super detectives or political heroines, but the less visible way in which women really can change society: how we raise the next generation, a pretty massive responsibility, but one which is still not seen as a hugely important “job”. She co-devised and performed in Dressing for Dinner, staged at the Theatre Workshop, Leeds, in 1983, and set up the performance art company, Royal Balle, in 1984. Charlotte Keatley was Judith E. Wilson Fellow in English at Cambridge University in 1989 and Writer in Residence for the New York Stage and Film Company in 1991. Later that year she co-directed the first production of Heathcote Williams' play Autogeddon at the Edinburgh Festival, where it was awarded an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First. My Mother Said I Never Should' was written in 1985 and first produced in 1987 when it won both the Royal Court/George Devine Award and the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best New Play. Following its publication in 1988, it has been studied as an A-level set text for a number of years and has subsequently been translated into 22 languages. It holds the distinction of being the most performed play in the English language written by a woman. The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted.Sophia Lovell Smith’s set is half playground, half home, suggesting the domestic cares and burdens of these women and the submerged playfulness of their youth. A big slide cascades down one side of the stage, yet its surface is covered in pristine carpet; the friction of home and hearth brings headlong fantasies to a halt. As the play moves between scenes of childish imagination and the reality of adulthood, we see how often the protagonists’ ambitions shrink over time. You have been a trailblazer for women in theatre over the last 30 years. How do you feel the industry has changed during this time? The performers skilfully navigate Keatley’s nonlinear chronology, but Draper’s production somewhat clunkily indicates the shifts in time with era-appropriate album covers shown on a screen above the stage – for the Sex Pistols and Madonna – accompanied by the corresponding music. These transitions are often drawn out, adding extra time to a play that already feels longer than it needs to be. After opening with a burst of boisterous energy, the production becomes increasingly sluggish. In 1990 Keatley was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Most Promising Newcomer Award. After receiving success and awards for her first play, 'My Mother Said I Never Should', 'Waiting for Martin', a short monologue she wrote about the Falklands War, was produced by the English Shakespeare Company in 1987. Later that year Keatley won an Edinburgh Festival Fringe First award for her work in co-directing 'Autogeddon'. She also wrote the screenplay to 'Falling Slowly', for Channel 4 television, and the children's drama, 'Badger', for Granada television. Her work for radio includes ten episodes of the BBC series 'Citizens', the play 'Is Green The Same For You', and an adaptation of Mrs Gaskell's novel 'North and South'. In 2003, she was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to write an epic play set in Georgia and the Caucasus entitled 'All the Daughters of War'. She wrote the screenplay to Falling Slowly, for Channel 4 television, and the children's drama, Badger, for Granada television. Her work for radio includes ten episodes of the BBC series Citizens, the play Is Green The Same For You (1989), and an adaptation of Mrs Gaskell's novel North and South.

The play details the lives of four women through the immense social changes of the 20th century. Using a kaleidoscopic time structure, Charlotte Keatley’s story focuses on four generations of one family as they confront the most significant moments of their lives. The poignancy of the plot was made even more apparent by the intimacy of Corpus Playroom, the most effective setting to convey the stark conflict between childhood ignorance and the omniscience of hindsight. Director Gabriella Shennan commented on the intentionality behind the staging of the production, explaining how the theatre’s two entrances enabled the play’s non-linearity, while Ioana Dobre’s thoughtful set design served to remind us of the constant intrusion of the past on the present. I think it’s a play that anyone, any age or gender, can relate to: it’s about family, and ordinary family, working class and middle class characters. And love, how we show it or withhold it; and ambition, what that is in each generation. And it’s both funny and moving, so it’s a play that makes us react – either acting in it or watching it. When I’m writing plays I think about this: I want the audience to laugh and cry and be truly moved, in one evening. She studied drama at the University of Manchester and as a postgraduate at the University of Leeds. She has worked as a journalist for Performance magazine, the Yorkshire Post, the Financial Times and the BBC. The play has frequently been revived internationally. [3] It was for many years the most performed drama by a female playwright, until it was overtaken by The Vagina Monologues. [4] Awards and nominations [ edit ]Yet amidst these events, there is nonetheless an undercurrent of humour which lightens the mood somewhat. It is, at the end of the day, a set of circumstances which is instantly recognisable as normal family life and the "ordinariness" of it will strike a chord with the audience. It was a decade later before I had my daughter, and now she’s at university; and recently I cleared my parent’s house after my Mum died; so now the scenes in the play which show these things make me cry… I think I could only write a play spanning so much when I was at the beginning of my adult life, and observed it all as an outsider.

Charlotte Keatley studied drama at the Victoria University of Manchester and as a postgraduate at the University of Leeds. She has worked as a journalist for Performance magazine, the Yorkshire Post, the Financial Times and the BBC. She co-devised and performed in 'Dressing for Dinner', staged at the Theatre Workshop, Leeds, in 1983, and set up the performance art company, Royal Balle, in 1984. She was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow in English at Cambridge University in 1989 and Writer in Residence for the New York Stage and Film Company in 1991. No, my rule is I must always love every character I write, so I can be sympathetic to each one’s point of view when I’m writing. That makes a better play. And I would act any one of them. I’d actually most like to play Doris, I think I have a very old northern woman inside me – how else could I have written all this age 25?! In 2000 Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should (1988) was chosen as one of the 100 Significant Plays of the twentieth century, by the Royal National Theatre. The play has a non-chronological and non-linear structure and moves between different places (Manchester, Oldham, and London) and time periods. It presents various episodes in the lives of the four female characters between the 1920s to 1987. It also features scenes set in "the wasteground", where the four characters play together as their child selves in their own contemporary costumes. The play details the lives of four women through the immense social changes of the twentieth century. Using a kaleidoscopic time structure, Charlotte Keatley’s story focuses on four generations of one family as they confront the most significant moments of their lives.

Black History Month 2023 celebration at the New Vic

This play comes out of watching the new opportunities and pressures on women which I saw in the 1970s and 80s. I had far more choice as a 25-year-old than the 80-year-old woman next door ever had for her life. What would I do? Would I ever manage to be a mother? What relationships would I have? I set about inventing four generations of women who all made different choices. Scene 2 is set in 1940, in Chendle Hulme, where Doris is 40, and Margaret is 9. Doris is dusting the piano while singing, and is unaware that her daughter, Margaret is playing with ‘Sukey’- her doll, under it. Doris shows little encouragement and doesn’t participate in any jokes, or activities that Margaret does, and ignores some questions: Music is used to evoke era and atmosphere in My Mother Said I Never Should. This is the case in a number of Keatley’s other works, notably The Singing Ringing Tree, a 1991-2 musical for children based on European folk tales. She has subsequently had a busy schedule writing for radio and television dramas, as well as in teaching theatre workshops throughout the UK and internationally. She has done a good deal of work in and for schools. She wrote and co-directed Forest, her 2001 play for teenagers in Burnley, and The First Pirate Queen for Withington Girls’ School in Manchester during 2005.