Fanny Kemble
Actress Domini Blythe on Victorian writer/anti-slavery activist
Here is a four part series on Domini Blythe,director/writer Peter Hinton, and the life of Victorian actress Fanny Kemble.
Kemble’s controversial journals against American slavery helped turn British public opinion around against the Confederacy, ultimately changing the outcome of the American Civil War.
The story begins in a vintage North American performance venue.
Domini Blythe - "I started to think about Fanny Kemble in the late 70’s and the reason I started to think about this was because I used to work a lot in Philadelphia in the winters at The Walnut Street Theatre which is oldest theatre in North America. That theatre had a very strong connection to something called the Charlotte Cushman club. Charlotte Cushman was a 19th century actress in America who came from a wealthy family and when she died she left her townhouse."
"It was a beautiful 19th century townhouse in the middle of Philadelphia in a little cobbled street and she left it to become digs for actresses. When I got there, it was mostly a museum with a little bit of digs for two actresses at the top of the house but at 5:30 when the museum closed, it became our house and it had this wonderful library. In the library I discovered letters of Fanny’s and a couple of books about her. I was very drawn to her because of immediate connections in the sense that we were both English, both actresses, both working in Philadelphia. We both sort of had our lives in North America without having planned to just really by happenstance more than anything else."
"There had been two actors in the Stratford Festival company a long time ago. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, with whom I was working, said to me, you must try to get a one-woman show for when you are middle-aged."
"So I had it in my mind. My father (Richard Blythe) was an actor and also a writer so I asked my Dad. I commissioned him to write me a show for now when I was middle aged. I knew I would not be doing it before then. My father spent two years researching and he fell totally under Fanny Kemble’s spell as do many people when they discover her."
"He gave me a script but you couldn’t speak it . Out of sense of loyalty to Fanny, Dad refused to change a word that she’d written so he gave me this incredibly long 19th century work. It had tons of phrases and thoughts that go on for ten pages that you just can’t speak at all. So that script was not for me. Then it went through various permutations involving a few other writers."
"Then I worked with Peter Hinton and I thought this is the person that I want because he knows this period and has such a wonderful way with language. He’s a wonderful director so that was three years ago and the Studio Theatre was fantastic. Richard Monette was so totally supportive of it and they gave us three years to think about it and let Peter to do his own research. He took my father’s work but obviously went much further."
19th Century actress Fanny Kemble
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Domini Blythe as Fanny Kemble
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