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Stuart Smithers offers his 12th short play for the Arundel Festival
SussexWorld
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07/08/2024
Stuart Smithers maintains his proud record of contributing short plays to the annual Arundel Festival.
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Fun
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00:00
Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely
00:06
to speak to Stuart Smithers. Now Stuart, you have a very proud record of producing short plays for
00:12
the Arundel Festival, 12 now over the years. That is impressive, isn't it? And you love that short
00:19
form, that short writing form. What is the attraction in writing the short piece rather
00:25
than the rambling long piece? Well, it doesn't have to be rambling, does it? But no, it's getting
00:33
one's point over quickly within 30 or 40 minutes, succinctly. And perhaps easier to maintain
00:41
people's interest, you know, it moves faster and you choose a subject hopefully that is
00:49
entertaining, but also, yeah, informative. Yeah, and the play this year is forming part of what's
00:59
now called A Bunch of Plays, which is the new name for this year for what was called the Arundel
01:04
Theatre Trail, the fewer plays this year, the four plays. You've got the 12 o'clock slot running from
01:11
August the 17th to the 24th, and your piece is called Surplus Women. Who are these surplus women?
01:20
Well, the name Surplus Women comes from a Daily Mail article after the First World War,
01:30
when it denounced all these women whose husbands had died in the First World War in their thousands,
01:40
and who were now a burden on the state. And the attitude of the article was basically,
01:46
we don't want them, they're useless. After the war, the women had worked in the factories,
01:55
taken the men's jobs, but of course, when the men or the survivors of the men came back,
02:01
they wanted their jobs back. The women were made redundant and placed in a very,
02:06
very difficult financial position. And according to the Daily Mail, they should basically
02:12
go away somewhere. So that's where the name comes from.
02:17
And you show the human reality of this by focusing on one woman, 20 years apart.
02:23
That's right. Yes, that's right. The play sees the younger woman looking forward,
02:31
and her older self looking back. So they have a different perspective on what has happened during
02:37
that 20 years, and the struggle that this woman has to survive and to overcome all the difficulties
02:47
she's had, only then to lose her only son in the Second World War. So it's a traumatic story,
02:57
but it must have been an extremely traumatic time for these women, and perhaps we don't realise that
03:02
now. Traumatic and far from uncommon. That's right, very common, and all happening within
03:10
the space of 20 years. And when you think now back to, well, 20 years ago, it seems like yesterday,
03:16
doesn't it? A lot happened in that period of time, and I can't comprehend what it must have been like.
03:24
So that's why I wrote the play, to try and highlight the plight of these women,
03:30
because I don't think we should forget about it. No. Well, it sounds a fascinating piece.
03:35
It's part of a bunch of plays, the newly renamed Theatre Trail at the Arundel Festival,
03:41
and it runs from August 17th to the 24th. Stuart, good luck with it. Good to speak to you.
03:47
Thank you very much.
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