Trevor Schmidt on Historical Research, and Ladies' Bare-Knuckle Boxing in Victorian London
Trevor Schmidt
Playwright Featured in the ‘Alive and Kicking Cabaret’ at the Springboards New Play Festival.
I don’t remember what got me interested in the subject matter for this new work, but I tend to do deep dives on Google looking for inspiration and I came across a single, slight reference to ladies’ bare-knuckle boxing in Victorian London - which in turn led me to the little bit I could turn up on Liz Stokes, the undisputed Queen Of The Ring in a ladies’ underground Fight Club over a century earlier.
I love historical drama, love research. Loved this story of a woman, an underdog who literally climbed out of the gutter of a back alley and rose to prominence as the first legitimate female professional boxer, before having her fame obscured by the patriarchy, her acclaim wiped away in favour of a male peer, and effectively disappearing from the annals of history.
I was vaguely aware of street fighting among women in Victorian times from several artworks and newspaper illustrations of that period - but I was surprised to learn about the highly popular back-alley matches between women in the ‘genteel’ 1720s - a period most people would be familiar with from the highly successful movie (and novel) LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. This world of powdered wigs and coded fan language was definitely NOT the hardscrabble, grimy London of the Industrial revolution or OLIVER!. Liz Stokes’ rise to fame and legitimate acclaim as an athlete- touted as “the famous Champions of England” seemed ripe for dramatization.
I purposefully set out to challenge myself as I wrote PUNCHING JUDY (a gift of a title, suggested by a poet friend of mine). I tried to strictly silence my inner critic, shut up my censor, and write what seemed frightening to put on stage. Women hitting each other? Check. Women hitting men? No problem. Men hitting women, though….? Ugh. It made me nervous.
Image Provided by Author.
But I realized that these characters (particularly Liz and Jimmy) are products of their time - not ours. They are immersed in a world of violence, and blood, and sweat. It would not be a pleasant, clean, direct story or journey to tell. It all felt a bit “CAROUSEL”, you know? That whole “he hit me - and it felt like a kiss”. I realized that these characters live their lives like their sport - striking, feinting, defending. As the playwright, it would do me - and the play itself - no good to be defensive. I would need to embrace what made me uncomfortable. What I worried might offend others. What seemed to go against the traditional way a loving relationship “ought to go”.
I determined very early on the structure - each scene based on a boxing term, or lesson- and how the correlating scene reflects or combats the lesson being taught.
I wanted to press myself to write beyond when I felt a scene had finished. Isn’t that strange? We playwrights and dramaturges preach brevity and editing. I like to have clean, sharp “button” lines to end a scene - but I decided to extend silences and uncomfortable moments longer and draw out the end of scenes to see what happens in the moment AFTER you think it will end
I was pleasantly surprised at the response I received from fellow playwrights when we read the first few scenes in a Zoom meeting. There was an excitement to see the physical violence perpetrated on each other by the characters. It was seen as a rare and welcome opportunity not often accessible for female performers on the stage.
But how do I write that?
‘The Female Bruisers,’ John Collet (c. 1725 - 1780), Museum of London. Image Provided by Author.
Playwriting, (to my mind), is so much about words- how they sound, how to string them together, how a phrase conjures an image. How do I write about physical violence AND show it?
“Show- don’t tell” is the screenwriter’s motto, I hear. But don’t I have to tell the production team how to stage the violence- how to “show” it, if this play ever gets staged?
My playwright peers seemed eager for blood - Literally. No stylized “movement”. The final, especially, must be knock-down, drag-out war that leaves relationships and bodies broken and bruised.
As I continue to press toward the end of the play, the final bout looms large and daunting. It all hinges on a climactic fight in the ring between all four of the characters in the play - 2 women and 2 men. The result of this real-life bout was never published - despite the highly public profile of the event. And Liz Stokes was never mentioned again. Within 150 years, her legacy was overshadowed by her male counterpart, James Figg. My research dwindles out to a mere trickle and I am left with only my imagination….
As this is one of numerous pieces I am working on, I come back to the play sporadically and tweak things, writing a few lines at a time. Its episodic structure lends itself to piecemeal work.
But that ending…. It’s a long time coming.
