Bringing Dorothy Hodgkin to life on stage
Georgina Ferry is a science writer, author and broadcaster, and one of the media mentors on the UKRC's Ingenious Women project. In 1998 she published a biography of Nobel prizewinner Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994). In 2010, the centenary of Dorothy’s birth, she tackled a new challenge: writing for the theatre. You can see what she does the rest of the time at www.georginaferry.com
Just over a year ago I offered write a one-woman show to accompany the unveiling of a bust of Dorothy Hodgkin at the 
Oxford University Museum of Natural History, on the occasion of her centenary. For much of her career, Dorothy had conducted her research in the Museum’s semi-basement. The date was set for 10 May, and it was all down to me to make it happen.
Theatre has always played a big part in my life. Nevertheless, turning the raw material of my biography into a 40-minute monologue was going to be a challenge. I decided to use the technique of ‘verbatim theatre’, compiling the text almost entirely from Dorothy’s own letters and other writings. She wrote vividly, almost as she spoke, a style that was eminently performable. I focused the drama round her work on penicillin, her personal relationships and her touching modesty.
It’s recently struck me that turning a script into a piece of live theatre is very like an engineering project: the creative team starts with a vision and works together to surmount all manner of practical problems and make that vision a reality. I was extremely lucky to work with Abbey Wright, one of Britain’s best up-and-coming directors (she’ll next be working with Danny Boyle on Frankenstein at the National!); Miranda Cook, an extraordinary actor who threw herself into the task of delivering scientific language with authority and performing ‘experiments’ on stage; Andy Reader, a freelance production manager and lighting designer who had done research in crystallography; and Florence McHugh and Chris Barlow who designed the set and the sound. Together we became ‘Hodgkin Centenary Productions’.
For two days before the first performance the whole team stayed in my house, rehearsing and ‘getting in’ by day and editing sound effects, choosing images for projection and making props by night. I told my husband I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so alive.
The opening night in the Museum, a full house including Dorothy’s daughter Liz and her 92-year old sister Diana, revealed just what live theatre can do. There was laughter, much more than I expected, and some tears as Miranda movingly evoked Dorothy’s singular passion and integrity. We’ve since done a UK tour, ten performances in eight venues, ending in York on 20 November. My role shifted from author to producer as I raised funds, booked rehearsal spaces, theatres, train tickets and accommodation, designed flyers and programmes, and generally kept the show on the road. I lay awake the night before each performance fretting that no one would come, but we had lovely audiences everywhere.
Post-show discussions revealed huge curiosity about how Dorothy achieved so much as a woman, wife and mother in the early 20th century. For me, it has been extraordinary to see how effectively theatre can communicate the creativity and imagination that drives the scientific life. And if a few more people now know who Dorothy Hodgkin was, well that’s good too.
Comments
Ruth Wilson:
Hi Georgina,
What a wonderful, immersive experience the creation of your play was. I have had the great pleasure of being able to see it, when you came to Otley Science Festival in November and I loved it. Dorothy came vividly to life - her enthusiasm, her prodigious commitment and hard work, the amazing social benefit of her achievement. Beautifully staged and acted.
Will there be more performances?
Will you write another play about an eminent woman scientist - and who would you pick?
Now I want to see your play or something similar on at the National! I hope Abbey Wright reads this blog :-)
Georgina Ferry:
Hi Ruth
I would love to see the show come to the stage again one day, but for now everyone in the team has moved on to other projects.
The experience has certainly made me think about the possibility of writing more plays. But I'm not the only one writing about women scientists at the moment. Esther Shanson is creating an ambitious piece, The Nature of Things, that combines music, dance and drama to tell the stories of Dorothy Hodgkin, Kathleen Lonsdale and Rosalind Franklin (see http://www.curvedspacetheatre.co.uk), and Liz Rothschild wrote a show earlier this year called Blooming Snapdragons about women geneticists in the early 20th century (http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/friends/events/bloomingsnapdragons.htm)
Getting a play about a woman scientist into a venue like the National would be wonderful. There are some great plays about scientists (Copenhagen, Breaking the Code) that have been artistically and commercially successful. The secret is not so much to find the right person as to find a powerful underlying human story that is inherently dramatic. Any suggestions?
Rachel Tobbell:
Hi Georgina, what was it about Dorothy Hodgkin, do you think, that enabled her to succeed? In what ways is she a role model for other women?
Tony North:
Georgina - I think it's worth repeating what I said to you in Otley, how much I had enjoyed the whole performance, especially Miranda's acting and the remarkably effective production. It was nostalgic for me, as I think that, apart from Fleming, I had met every one of the scientific characters referred to. My best recollections of Dorothy are from her later life when, despite appearing to be very fragile, she continued with trips all over the world - doubtless with help from others, which was somehow on hand because of the warmth that she inspired in others.
Remarkably, though, in all my career I have often worked with women scientists and have never thought of them as unusual for being women - just fellow workers on equal terms.
Best regards
Tony North
Georgina Ferry:
Rachel, I've thought a lot about what enabled Dorothy to succeed. Briefly (or perhaps not so briefly), the list is as follows:
A first-class mind, combining rigour and imagination.
Parents who had a relationship based on shared intellectual interests, and who had high expectations of their daughters.
Being given an unusual degree of responsibility at an early age, as her parents were abroad most of the time.
Choosing a field of research that was in its very opening moments, and which was not part of any established discipline but grew at the boundaries between chemistry, physics and biology.
The fact that the founders of this field (the Braggs, Bernal etc) were social liberals (or even further to the left) and had a strongly egalitarian outlook.
Choosing a husband who did not expect her to give up working, and (because he was away from home a great deal of the time) did not demand her active support in his own career.
The existence of Somerville College as an all-female institution - it was her sole employer for the first ten years of her career, and gave her maternity leave and pay (three times) when there was no statutory obligation to do so.
The war - very few people were in a position to continue with basic research, and her own research on penicillin was an official war research project.
An almost unerring instinct for attracting very good research collaborators, not all of whom looked at all promising on paper.
The true scholar's capacity to read widely in her subject and maintain friendly exchanges with a worldwide network of colleagues, so that she always had the latest information and techniques at her fingertips.
Tony, her travelling was indeed remarkable, and reflected her earnest desire to promote scientific research in developing countries, especially China and India. Her final journey to China in 1993, when she was indeed very frail and many feared she would not survive the journey, was made explicitly as a sign of her support to the country which was then the target of a great deal of international criticism in the post-Tiananmen years.
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