Blue Stockings
Optima asked Sarah Livingstone (Archaeology & Anthropology 2011) for her thoughts about playing Maeve Sullivan in January’s moving ADC production of Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale. Blue Stockings is a warm, heartening play about the first generation of female undergraduates at Cambridge. Over the course of the first act, it transpires that my character, Maeve Sullivan, comes from humbler beginnings than her three friends, her study being funded by a benefactor rather than her family. Reading up on the real life ‘Maeve Sullivans’ like Trixie Pearson who studied in Oxford in the 1930s, was more affecting than I expected. All the girls I read about
“
Understanding what was at stake for girls like Maeve, the moment when her brother comes with news of her mother’s death, necessitating her return home and the abandoning of her studies, is all the more devastating. Her story certainly made me feel bashful for complaining about essay deadlines and not always fully appreciating my own privilege in attending university. Anthony Rubinstein
The four women arrive in Cambridge to start their studies. Sarah Livingstone is third from the left.
“
Robert Eager (Paper Butterfly Productions).
(mainly in Bluestockings by Jane Robinson) had fascinating, humbling stories about mothers and fathers who sacrificed everything for their education. For those parents, attending university was an opportunity for their daughter to move up a class and better her future family’s life prospects.
Billy Sullivan tells his sister Maeve that their mother has died and she is needed back at home to look after the family
Entrepreneurial weekend
James McAulay (right, Computer Science 2011) and Pembroke student Neil Satra (Computer Science 2011 )
Final year Computer Science student James McAulay experienced life in the fast lane during the last weekend in April. “Two friends and I applied to a tech accelerator called YCombinator on a whim, purely for the learning experience, and got through to the final interviews, so I flew out to San Francisco at the weekend for a ten-minute interview! Our expenses were covered, and we were only there 40 hours before we had to fly back.” They weren’t successful, but they haven't been deterred. As if that wasn’t enough for one weekend, after landing at LHR at 7am, they then went straight to 10 Downing Street at midday with Entrepreneur First (a seed investment programme that selects purely on the basis of technical talent) for a round table meeting with the Prime Minister's Tech Advisor. “It was a crazy weekend,” said James. James plans to start his own company and recently set up a website which has revolutionised the way people find out about May Balls. www.whichmayball.co.uk
Optima, Fitzwilliam College Newsletter
19