An Edwardian Weekend Workshop

Introduced and led by Theatre Practitioner and Actress Illona Linthwaite 

Location Via Euripide, 3 Milan

Dates 10 and 11 February, 2023

Times 10.30am – 12.30pm and 14.30 – 17.00

Two fierce feminist Edwardian women will turbocharge this workshop.

They were remarkable women, but very different:

ANNA WICKHAM (1884-1947)

• Poet, performer, fighter for women’s freedoms, host of literary gatherings in 

Paris and London, wife, mother. Committed suicide aged 63.

CICELY HAMILTON (1875-1952)

• Playwright, actress, novelist, suffragette, activist, journalist, worker for ambulance service (WW1), fire watcher (WW2). Died aged 82.

During the workshop, we will discuss how people tell their stories and give the members of the group a chance to tell theirs.  Participants will look at poems by Anna Wickham to read and deliver, plus scenes from Cicely Hamilton’s splendid plays A Pageant of Great Women and Diana of Dobson. Much of this material has serious content, but is also extremely funny. 

We will discuss the manners, politics and fashions of the day, as well as society’s expectations of women within marriage, and the influence of the Bloomsbury Group. 

On Sunday, the participants will divide into smaller groups to perform ‘tableux vivants’, which were very popular in Victorian and Edwardian times. In the afternoon Illona will then perform parts of her one-woman play about Anna Wickham, Anna on Anna by Adrian Mitchell, which she commissioned in the 1980s and performed for the following ten years. 

No preparation for this Edwardian workshop is required.

We will close with an open discussion and drinks, and any reflections on the workshop. 

We are excited to welcome Illona back to Milan in February 2024!