Yesterday, WordPress reminded me that this blog is five years old this week. Five years! Half a decade I’ve been slogging away at this, regularly re-inventing the style and appearance but for the most part, tapping away on my own late at night and sharing my crazy excursions and random thoughts about women in Irish theatre.
In some ways, so much has shifted in five years: Waking the Feminists. Discoveries of friendships: Kay Swift; Mary Manning; Lilian Roberts Finlay. And my own forging of wonderful friendships: fabulous encounters with those who loved and cherished these women. Oh, and I’m a doctor now; much lost history has been recorded for posterity.
But, for the most part, I work away on my own, worrying at sentences and racking my brains for new methods to track down lost material. So, for my next adventure, I’m adopting the persona of a ‘lone she wolf’.** I shall be solitary, but brilliant and proud. Because five years after I started this research, sleeping on the sofa bed of a friend in Los Angeles, I’m heading to Yale University as a Research Fellow to investigate further the connections of Irish actresses and the New York theatre scene. Leaving behind my husband, family and my coffee machine is not going to be easy, but my sense is that Aideen et al are going to take to Yale’s Beinecke Library and the fall in New Haven. (I may have to explain to them about Gilmore Girls but we’ll work on that.)
If you’ve any questions or thoughts about New York and these women, please let me know.
Also, if you’d be interested in doing a ‘guest blog’ while I’m preparing or travelling, you’d be most welcome. (All you have to do is write 1,000 words and email it to me, with a few pics, if you have any.)
I’ll be back to see the Waking the Feminists publish their research in November, but in the interim, if you see any Irish actresses being studiously avoided in public, do sit beside them. You don’t have to make conversation, but she-wolves don’t bite. Unless you make them.
And I’m in a nostalgic mood, so how many of these photos can you remember from the last five years?
** For full explanation of the ‘She Wolf’ metaphor, you’ll have to read the last blog post.
August 25, 2016 at 3:22 pm
Yale! How marvellous – congratulations on the fellowship and have a happy and productive time. I will miss the blog, though. This was a lovely trawl through previous posts.
August 27, 2016 at 5:27 pm
Thanks Finola, and there will be more posts — with some photos of the New England autumn. x