Sarah Daniels - Born 1957
British Playwright & Screen Writer
Firstly, I must apologise about the picture used. I searched and searched for a photography of the dramatist herself but could not find a picture of her anywhere. Sarah Daniels is one of my favourite playwrights and really a woman who had a massive influence on the way I think, so even without a portrait of her, I could not have left her out of the album.
In high school, drama was my passion. As mentioned in my previous entry about my Great-Aunt, Barbara Jackson (Wonderful Woman No. 17: http://iamawonderfulwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/barbara-jackson-wonderful-woman-no-17.html ), I had performed on stage from the age of five and had always wanted to be a performer. My drama teacher at high school was another wonderful woman, Annie Cubbin. I attended a school in the north of England where expectation for pupils was pretty low, in my entire school career I never heard anyone other than Ms. Cubbin use the word university, the school did not have a sixth form facility - those of us who did go on to do our A-levels had to find somewhere else to do them, I felt we were being steered towards thinking about work as secretaries and manual workers (though many of us went on to do other things), one great thing the school did have was excellent drama facility and a handful of teachers who actually cared about the lives their pupils had before them. Annie was young, vivacious and completely different to any other teacher in the school. She talked to us about travelling the world, feminism and equality. She took a group of us to a three day residential course at a university and enrolled is in a number of drama competitions, showcases at various locations and entered three of us in a girl's public speaking competition (for which I still treasure the medal I was awarded). She wanted us to understand the world outside the tiny part of it we happened to be being raised in.
In my last year at the school, she curated a show made up of scenes from a number of plays that all had strong female characters. I was given a scene from Masterpieces by Sarah Daniels, I played a social worker called Rowena who was visiting one of her clients, a prostitute called Hillary. I wasn't given the full play, just that scene, which I loved. I thought my character was strong and interesting. And my teacher spoke so passionately about it... the name of the play stuck in my head.
A few years later, I was studying performing arts and looking for pieces with a powerful message and once again, strong female characters. Masterpieces popped back into my head and I headed off to buy a copy of the script from a local book shop.
There are very few things you will read that will actually change your life but as I sat an read Masterpieces as a woman in my early twenties, I came to a few realisations about the world. About the objectification of women and how some men perceive women. It changed my attitude towards the media, the way women are pictured in magazines and it made me angry about sections of our society. For writing that play, for giving me that window into a life I knew nothing about, I am so grateful for Sarah Daniels and have been in awe of her ever since.
Masterpieces, is of course, not her only work. She has wrote several that focus on a strong female message covering violence, sexual abuse and oppression, two volumes of her plays have been published - I have not read them all but have been impressed by those that I have. Sarah has also written for television, including episodes of Eastenders, Grange Hill and Holby City.
With her late civil-partner, Claire Walton (who died in 2009), Sarah has been actively involved in promoting social justice, equal opportunities and education.
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