Theatre backdrop and a terrible selfie:-))

I mentioned a while ago that I’d got tickets for a show called ‘Women who gave no f*cks’. I went last night with two friends from the Oxfam shop (extra). The show was great fun - based on the art of storytelling - not entirely scripted. Three women, and three stories told in each half - about goddesses and mythical women, and also real women. There was a clapometer - a member of the audience with a big yellow glove on the end of a stick - and the most popular story was about the match girls at the Bryant and May factory in the east end of London in 1888 where the women and children employed to make matches - with dangerous machinery, life threatening materials (white phosphorus) and poverty wages - went on strike. They gained huge public support, and gained a rare partial success - Bryant and May increased wages and improved conditions, though they didn’t stop using white phosphorus for another 10 years. 
The magic of storytelling is that the women made this rather grim story entertaining and powerful.  At the interval everyone was invited to write  - in chalk on the stage - the name of an important or powerful woman in their lives.  I put my mum:). I felt a bit unoriginal - but when we came back and the storytellers asked 3 people in the audience whose name they had written, 2 had put their mums! At the end, the players gave the audience an imaginary gift - Seeds of Change.  It felt so good and positive to see the show, and reassuring that the mainly young audience were thinking in feminist ways. 
The extra is a selfie of my two friends from Oxfam - M who is a volunteer and whose age begins with 8. And G, the manager, whose age begins with 3.  Both very special women. I’m rubbish at taking these - you can see my arm, and I’m leaning over to get my face in.  It’s good of both of them, though. A lovely evening.