‘OLDER people know who she is. Younger people? No clue.”
The unknown woman is the focus of Jennie Lee, Tomorrow Is A New Day by Arbroath-based playwright, Matthew Knights, directed by Emma Lynne Harley, originally from the Kingdom.
Lee was born in Lochgelly, Fife in 1904, and grew up above a theatre. Becoming the North Lanark MP in 1929 at 24, she was an MP before she was legally allowed to vote for herself. After her husband Nye Bevan died, Lee became the first Minister for the Arts and founder of the Open University. But, aside from who her husband was, you might have missed her massive significance.
I caught up with writer Knights and director Lynne to reflect on their challenge of getting a remarkable Scots woman into one simple narrative because as Lynne said, “stories are neat things and lives are not”.
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Just how writer Knights got from Lincolnshire to here was easily explained. “I worked in Fife for a while, seeing communities that she came from and wondering about what the story of this place was.
“You see strife and misery a lot of the time when you look at history. But where you get coal mining, you get an identity of a place, and I’m interested in both the struggles that people went through and achievements that came out of the post-war settlement, like the NHS.
“She was very aware of the poverty people lived in, and that formed her outlook. She was linked to Bevan, but she was a fascinating figure in her own right. In Lochgelly, there is a library named after her but there’s not a statue or anything.”
That lack of local recognition was something Lynne was keen to address: “I had never heard of her. The majority of people don’t necessarily know who she is. When I say she was the founder of the Open University, first-ever Minister for the Arts, and then she was married to Bevan, they go, ‘oh, yeah!’ That’s the thing that makes them click.”
Only after the death of her husband did she become a minister, “and it’s that interesting aspect of being marginalised because of your sex”.
Recognising and celebrating her local origins is key as Knights explained. “We did a couple of readings in Dunfermline and Lochgelly, shared the early stages of the work, so people who live there have seen it develop and supported it.
“We have been trying to focus on the local, celebrate her in her own town; we’re doing the premiere there as well [with] funding from Creative Scotland.”
Lynne agreed: “It’s fantastic a play is being produced in Lochgelly because they have an amazing theatre. I remember going there as a child. It feels fantastic to be making a professional show there, like a special rare thing.”
This was especially true as though Lee would never claim she was a feminist, Lynne explained she was driven by, “socialism and equality, which is feminism, but not the way that she thought about it, (it was) the founding principle of everything she did, trying to not just ensure the basics for people, but a quality of life as well.”
It was resonant for Lynne. “I believe that arts should be accessible for everyone the same way that she did.”
However, this is not a sombre retelling of poverty and misery. “It’s quite entertaining,” said Lynne. “Watching rehearsals is astounding because of (the actors’) ability to keep on track and moving. It does have a sense of chaos and messiness which people will find fun. I find it fun.”
It also avoids being patronising as Knights outlined. “I’m passionate about social history as a means of understanding the present. Companies like 7:84 did great things with this model of theatre to reach working-class people, so it’s not just shown to people. It’s something to do with people’s lives.”
Centrally the arts were critical to Lee’s working-class upbringing, Knights said, as, “her dad used to like Handel, and he was a miner. A lot of those communities worked in a similar industry and had a strong cultural unity; a storytelling tradition that was strong. I think that’s been lost a lot with the decline of industrial communities. Everyone was passing stories, whether it was a tragic tale, a mining disaster, a song, or a funny story – some of this stuff is lost.”
But her legacy for the arts is still keenly felt, said Knights. “Jennie Lee as the first Minister for the Arts transformed the landscape of the idea of public funding. We take it for granted now, but she advocated for that – she knew the importance of it.”
Lynne was also keen to emphasise the development of Lee, the person. “This play started between two different versions of Jenny Lee, her younger self when she’s first elected to Parliament and her older self when she is invited to join the House of Lords. [It was] the debate between what the right way to go about making change is and what the right way to stay true to yourself is – that kind of socialist value, of everything [being] the best for everyone.”
I finally turned to what comes after the debut. Knights explained: “We would like to do a tour. It’s important to celebrate the fact that we’ve built it over time. We’ve got the Open University on board. They’re supporting creative writing workshops I’m doing in the local area.
“We’ve got funding from Unity Trust, to give out free tickets to people on low incomes. We’re hoping to make it reach a lot of people, and when we do a tour, we would like to make it a popular show that could resonate in places which have a similar sort of history.”
And so, after the debut and premiere, we can hopefully look forward to the knowledge being shared far and wide and the woman who had a famous husband being celebrated properly for who she was – an arts pioneer and socialist in her own right.
Jennie Lee: Tomorrow Is A New Day, a play by Matthew Knights, opened at the Lochgelly Centre on Friday and will now transfer to the Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline on November 12 and 13.
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