Fragments & Monuments

We are delighted to project our brand new Wollstonecraft Live! short, following the reading and performance at Newington Green Meeting House in 2018 at  A Celebration of Mary Wollstonecraft https://bit.ly/2PczPJ4

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) lived and worked on Newington Green, London now recognised as the birthplace of feminism. She meditated and prayed in Pew 19, Newington Green Meeting House.

 By installing and projecting our new short film https://vimeo.com/329592102  on the wall of St Pancras Old Church, we link Newington Green and St Pancras Old Church where Mary Wollstonecraft married William Godwin on March 29, 1797 and was buried soon after.

 Wollstonecraft Live!

Play by Kaethe fine

Music by Alastair Gavin

Directed by Anna Birch

Commissioned by Wollstonecraft Presents

Anna Birch is herself a transhistorical neighbour of Wollstonecraft having lived and worked at Newington Green for years!  She has celebrated the often-hidden achievements of Wollstonecraft since 2000. Through performance, film, outdoor screenings and book publishing and often internationally her company Fragments & Monuments continues to create a living monument to her legacy.

It was wonderful to be in such an atmospheric church, sitting in Mary’s pew. Marys words resonate as strongly today as they did when she wrote them. The phrase that stays with me most is when Mary said that she wanted love and she also wanted to earn her own living. In so many ways she’s such a modern woman! Audience member, 2018

NEXT UP: Wollstonecraft Living Literature Walk 

Sunday June 9, 2019 on Newington Green, London N1

In collaboration with…. Stoke Newington Literary Festival, Scary Little Girls 

For more on our contribution to raising awareness of Wollstonecraft through performance and film and Anna’s living monument methodology see:

Birch, A and K. Irwin, Embodied and En-Sited Performance: Reflections on Gender in two Performances in Analysing Gender in Performance (eds) Halferty, P and Leeney, C Palgrave (Pending)

A, Birch in Grace Grace Grace (eds) Albor, T, Meynell, K, Vortex, H with photographer Vason, M, Live Art Development Agency & GraceGraceGrace 2019, pp. 52, 101

Birch A, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Trail Blazer to Parliament, 2018

Barton, B., Dreyer-Lude, M., Birch, A (eds.) ‘Mediating Practice(s): Performance as Research and/in/through Mediation’, Experiments and IntensitiesSeries Volume 3, Winchester: Winchester University Press

Birch, A ‘Repetition and performativity: site-specific performance and film as living monument’ in Birch, A and Tompkins, J (eds) Performing Site-Specific Theatre, Politics, Place, Practice. Palgrave, 2012 pp.118-134

Birch, A and Tompkins, J (eds) Performing Site-Specific Theatre, Politics, Place, Practice.Palgrave, 2012

Birch, A and Iohe, T The Wollstonecraft Live Experience!(ISBN 978-0-9568008-0-0), 2011

Birch, A ‘Performing Research, cite, sight, site in Farber’, L (ed) On Making.University of Johannesburg, 2010, pp. 120-128

Anna is a founding member of the Mary on the Green Campaign working to raise funds for a sculpture by contemporary artist Maggi Hambling, which will be the world’s first memorial to Wollstonecraft. Donations gratefully received at www.maryonthegreen.org