Stuart Smithers maintains his proud record of contributing short plays to the annual Arundel Festival.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely
00:06to speak to Stuart Smithers. Now Stuart, you have a very proud record of producing short plays for
00:12the Arundel Festival, 12 now over the years. That is impressive, isn't it? And you love that short
00:19form, that short writing form. What is the attraction in writing the short piece rather
00:25than the rambling long piece? Well, it doesn't have to be rambling, does it? But no, it's getting
00:33one's point over quickly within 30 or 40 minutes, succinctly. And perhaps easier to maintain
00:41people's interest, you know, it moves faster and you choose a subject hopefully that is
00:49entertaining, but also, yeah, informative. Yeah, and the play this year is forming part of what's
00:59now called A Bunch of Plays, which is the new name for this year for what was called the Arundel
01:04Theatre Trail, the fewer plays this year, the four plays. You've got the 12 o'clock slot running from
01:11August the 17th to the 24th, and your piece is called Surplus Women. Who are these surplus women?
01:20Well, the name Surplus Women comes from a Daily Mail article after the First World War,
01:30when it denounced all these women whose husbands had died in the First World War in their thousands,
01:40and who were now a burden on the state. And the attitude of the article was basically,
01:46we don't want them, they're useless. After the war, the women had worked in the factories,
01:55taken the men's jobs, but of course, when the men or the survivors of the men came back,
02:01they wanted their jobs back. The women were made redundant and placed in a very,
02:06very difficult financial position. And according to the Daily Mail, they should basically
02:12go away somewhere. So that's where the name comes from.
02:17And you show the human reality of this by focusing on one woman, 20 years apart.
02:23That's right. Yes, that's right. The play sees the younger woman looking forward,
02:31and her older self looking back. So they have a different perspective on what has happened during
02:37that 20 years, and the struggle that this woman has to survive and to overcome all the difficulties
02:47she's had, only then to lose her only son in the Second World War. So it's a traumatic story,
02:57but it must have been an extremely traumatic time for these women, and perhaps we don't realise that
03:02now. Traumatic and far from uncommon. That's right, very common, and all happening within
03:10the space of 20 years. And when you think now back to, well, 20 years ago, it seems like yesterday,
03:16doesn't it? A lot happened in that period of time, and I can't comprehend what it must have been like.
03:24So that's why I wrote the play, to try and highlight the plight of these women,
03:30because I don't think we should forget about it. No. Well, it sounds a fascinating piece.
03:35It's part of a bunch of plays, the newly renamed Theatre Trail at the Arundel Festival,
03:41and it runs from August 17th to the 24th. Stuart, good luck with it. Good to speak to you.
03:47Thank you very much.