There have been too many women in history to count, who battled with oppressions, dilemmas and discrimination. The appreciation of these women, especially in today’s society looking back, makes it even more incredible to what lengths these inspirational women went too to have their thoughts heard. When first deciding on our performance topic, we had the intention of using a number of influential women in our piece, creating a scenario whereby all these women would meet. With this in mind, it was incredibly hard to choose only a few women and then make a relation between them to make the performance interesting yet respectful. The list was shortened to six women. These were: Amy Winehouse, Eva Braun, Zelda Fitzgerald, Jackie Kennedy, Lili Elbe and Myra Hindley. Although not all of these women were inspirational or even likable people, they were complex. They had the promise of vibrant and thorough material. However, this was the main problem.
All these women, intriguing and unique in their own right, had too much to give when devising a piece of drama. Furthermore, even the most well-known women on the list, such as Jackie Kennedy, did not necessarily mean the audience would know their back story. This being events and moments that turned them into the people we know today. Therefore, the performance would have been mostly an explanation to who these women were instead of who they became. Thus, the performance would not have given these women justice of thorough examination into their world. Therefore, we decided to narrow down the list to only one woman. With a lengthy debate, we decided that we wanted to celebrate a woman that was not too modern, and that was undervalued and underrated. This led us to the life of Zelda Fitzgerald.
Zelda Fitzgerald, as the American socialite, was known widely in the 1930’s as a fabulous party host and, more importantly, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. The successful writer, known best for his novel The Great Gatsby, based a lot of his main character Daisy on his wife, Zelda. Furthermore, he used old diaries and letters from the early courting of their romance to inspire his work. Therefore, he used her greatly in his work, making her his muse.
However, to society, Zelda was seen as a distraction or disturbance to Scott. Countless reports showed Zelda to be a flirt with men and a trouble maker, drinking and partying till the early hours of the morning. Nevertheless, it was not discovered until after her death, the turmoil and distress she was under, mostly due to her mental illness, bipolar. Unfortunately, due to the times in which Zelda was brought into, bipolar was not a discovered mental disorder until twenty years ago. Therefore, she was misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia. On top of this, she was thought to have miscarriages, postnatal depression, and an affair with a French airman and a love/hate relationship with her husband. All of these moments in her life were due to or affected by her mental illness of bipolar.
This was why we chose her instead of another influential woman. Even though Zelda had come from a world of wealth, she did suffer the pressures of society with an undiagnosed disorder. At the time of her life she was seen as erratic and, in her later years, a danger to society. Her behaviour today would be identified as different but treated correctly in modern day practices. This inspired us to explore the illness and to how it affected her in day to day life, but more importantly, how she coped with it.
