Attracted by the zeitgeist of Brexit, Populism, and all that I clicked online to perhaps book tickets at a new play coming shortly. The play is called `Youth Without God,` and is by Christopher Hampton, based on a novel by Odon Von Horvath, who escaped from Nazi Germany just before the war.
Yes, I care deeply about the subject matter, but it happened again…the thing that happens and has happened so many times, only these days I have less psychic energy left with which to challenge it.
When we lived in Manchester and I saw something interesting on at The Royal Exchange or The Library Theatre, and I phoned to book tickets, I would ask casually, how many are in the cast? If I was told 9, I would say, ah do you mean 7 men and 2 women? If the cast size was 4 I would say, do you mean 3 men and a woman? Ad infinutum. Sometimes I would guess wrongly. I think there was a Tom Stoppard play that had a cast of 13 with 1 woman, whose character had 2 lines. Do I exaggerate? I think not.
So I looked at the cast list of `Youth Without God` and there it was again. The ratio of 8 to 2, or 9 to 2, or something like. The thing is – I am in the middle of reading Transcriptions by Kate Atkinson in which women of all shapes, sizes and ages are intrinsic to every chapter. Major world events might look as if they are about men, but actually most things that happen are about men and women both. It`s all a question of how you look at it.
A couple of other plays booked anyway, and at the end of the month the launch of the Didcot Writers` Anthology, and another meeting about Remedies, not to mention the creative writing workshop set to launch at Trinity Church, North Finchley on September 12th. Perhaps that`s enough activity for this month.
