Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Ruth Jones, Netball Super League, FGM ban at risk in Gambia, Muses, Hadestown creator Anaïs Mitchell

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Ruth Jones joins Nuala McGovern to talk about playing the Mother Superior in a West End production of Sister Act. She discusses getting out of her comfort zone by appearing on stage for the first time since 2018 and working on her fourth novel. Plus what can fans of Gavin and Stacey expect from the Christmas special?This week, the Netball Super League, the UK's elite level domestic competition, relaunched and embarked on what it calls a "new era of transformational change". Anita Rani speaks to Claire Nelson, Managing Director of the Netball Super League, and London Pulse CEO Sam Bird.Politicians in The Gambia are debating whether to overturn the ban on female genital mutilation. Activist Fatou Baldeh MBE explains the impact this discussion is having on the ground and in other countries around the world.From the Pre-Raphaelites to Picasso, Vermeer to Freud, some of the most famous Western artwork involves an artist’s muse. So who are the muses who have inspired great art? How do they embody an artist’s vision? And why has the muse artist relationship led to abuse of power? Nuala was joined by guests including Penelope Tree was one of the most famous models of the 1960s and the muse of her then boyfriend, the photographer David Bailey. Grammy and Tony award-winning songwriter Anaïs Mitchell is the creator of the musical Hadestown – a genre-defying retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth blending folk music and New Orleans jazz. With productions on Broadway and now at the Lyric Theatre in London, Anaïs performed live in the Woman’s Hour studio and talked about the origins and impact of Hadestown.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Louise Corley

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. Today we'll hear from the actor and writer Ruth Jones, who's currently playing the mother superior in Sister Act in the West End. This week saw the relaunch of the Netball Super League, and we'll find out what it means for the future of the sport, and the 1960s model Penelope Tree,

on what it was like being a muse to celebrity photographer David Bailey. The first time that I worked with him, there was this very sexual, very electrical communication between us and that really informed the photographs that we did together. So no disruptions for the next hour, just you, the radio and a cup of what you fancy. But first, fans of Gavin and Stacey were overjoyed when it was announced earlier this month

that the much-loved comedy will return for a Christmas special this year. But the news was made bittersweet when it was also announced that the episode will be the last. The series is co-written by actor Ruth Jones with fellow actor and comedian James Corden, but Ruth is currently making her West End debut as Mother Superior in Sister Act, the musical. Well, she joined Nuala earlier this week,

and Nuala began by asking her if she realised what a party was going on in the audience at the Dominion Theatre every night. Well, it's quite funny because there is, I mean, for people who don't know the story of the show, Mother Superior is the head of this convent, which is connected with a church. And it's very run down. The whole place is falling apart and they need somebody to come to help them.

And who should come along but Dolores who Dolores Van Cartier, who is a singer hiding from her gangster boyfriend in the convent. And what ends up happening is that she gets involved with the singing nuns who at the start of the show sing terribly badly, but she manages to find their voices and they end up being this amazing choir.

But Mother Superior doesn't like change. She doesn't like what Dolores is doing to her beloved convent. And so it's a clash of two personalities. But at the beginning of Act Two, by this point, the nuns have found their voice and they're really into their singing. And what we do is have a little bit of interaction with the audience where some of the nuns go out and hand out leaflets, inviting people to come to the Mass because it's quite a party.

So I'm always in the wings at that point waiting to start Act Two and all I can hear are these cheers, these massive cheers. And I don't know what those nuns are doing out there. I don't think I'll ever find out. Well, I can tell you because I was there last night and it is like they're sending out flyers to a party and everyone's invited. But even beforehand, there's a real frisson of excitement.

People were singing along with, you know, the tunes that are played before it even starts. And it's such a diverse audience as well, which really struck me, perhaps compared to other theatre performances that I've been to. So it was loads of fun but as I was looking at you up there because I had read my briefing notes beforehand this is your West End debut and your musical theatre debut. Yes I mean I have technically I

have been in I did perform at the National Theatre which I I guess is also West End, back in the 90s. But this is definitely my first foray into musical theatre. I used to do it at school. Guys and Dolls? Guys and Dolls. Rob Brydon and I were in several musicals together. And I loved them and did them at university. I've always loved watching musicals.

But I never thought I'd actually be in one professionally. So was it out of your comfort zone? Very much so. I mean, to be honest, I turned it down initially because I just thought, oh, no, that's not me. And when I think about the people who'd played Mother Superior before, so, you know, we've had Sheila Hancock and Maggie Smith. And it's a very specific performance. I mean, Jennifer Saunders obviously played it brilliantly, and she brought her own comedic genius to it. But I just thought, well, everybody's English and quite sort of RP, and I just didn't feel it was me. That's received pronunciation. Received pronunciation. And so I didn't really automatically think I just didn't feel it was me. That's received pronunciation.

And so I didn't really automatically think I was ideal casting for it but they were so open to my interpreting it in my own way and I said well can I do a Welsh and they said yes thankfully. But I did find out that they were quite because the show is set in Philadelphia I did find out that there was quite a big Welsh emigration to Philadelphia and Pennsylvania back in the 19th century. I think because of the mining and apparently there are street names that are Welsh

there and there's quite a Welsh flavour there. Phew, that means that it's okay for me to have a Welsh name. Did I see that you were wearing socks with... You did. I noticed a little flash of red with your feet up on the desk. Yes. So that's Mother Superior, I should say my Mother Superior,

and we addressed this in the prologue, she moved to Philadelphia 30 years ago, but she's still got her accent. Absolutely. And there's a song in the second act where she is so at her wits end because her beloved convent has been so transformed by the arrival of Dolores because what it's done is it's brought loads of people to the church. They've raised loads of money to restore this beautiful church. But it has meant in Mother Superior's world that there are people

attending who are not the sort of people she would have imagined would have attended. And she just is despairing. So I have this lovely song to sing. And right at the end, I won't say what happens. I don't want to spoil it. But I end up putting my feet up on the desk in satisfaction. And you'll see that I am wearing a pair of Welsh flag socks. Indeed you are. Which often gets a cheer from the Welsh contingent in the audience. There's always a Welsh contingent, no more than the Irish contingent. But, you know, talk about stepping out of your comfort zone in musical theatre.

What about duetting with Beverly Knight? Oh, gosh. I mean, Beverly Knight's voice is, I say this to people all the time, it is like something from another world. It is absolutely, it's stunning. I can't find adjectives to describe her voice because the tone and the changes that she manages to

achieve and the the strength of her voice and it's consistent night after night after night and she's so professional but she's also so lovely and so welcoming and inclusive of everybody there's no kind of stariness about it and yet she she is a star. So there's one bit where I sing kind of at the end, I sing a few lines with her. And I am literally, if you could go inside my head, I'm standing there, trying my best to sing. And she's looking at me with this love and kindness, like almost like, come on, Ruth, you can do it. And I'm just there thinking, I'm singing on stage at Beverly Knight. Well, I'm sitting in the seat looking at you on stage at Beverly Knight. And I'm like, yes, you can hold your own. That was wonderful. I thought it was excellent. But because just knowing that I'm coming to speak to you as well,

I was like an out of the comfort zone. I was like, you go for it. They say do something right that scares you daily. But let us talk about somebody else who scared you. You mentioned Maggie Smith there. I heard you used to have, you had a nightmare about it? Oh, yes. Sorry, Maggie, if you're listening. But when I, so when I first started rehearsing, because I took part in the tour, actually,

because there's a touring production of Sister Act going on right now at a theatre near you. And I did Two Weeks in Dublin, which was my real debut on the stage, you know, that moment where I had to stand on stage in front of an audience. And I was just, I was anxious about it. And I had a dream one night that Maggie Smith said to me, oh, my dear, I hear you're playing her Welsh.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that no, that that will not do. So, yeah, I don't know. Who knows? Maybe she thinks it's a great idea. But in my dream, she didn't. Well, I loved it. I have to say it just such a feel good. And I just found there was so much laughter all around me. It is. It's a great show.

And I think, you know, it's so uplifting, so joyous. And the message of that, of the show really is spread the love. And just, and in this day and age, I mean, without wanting to get too serious about it, but with everything that's going on at the moment, I think musical theatre offers people an escape, you know, a live experience because it's not quite the same as watching your favourite film at home with, you know, with a box of chocolates to sort of comfort yourself. You're there and you're with other people and you're joining in. And, you know, people leave that theatre and they are smiling and they are uplifting. They're on a high.

So come and see it. Well, I did and I loved it. But I have a lot to talk to you about. I can see the clock ticking. You talk about not sitting, watching a film that is more physical with Sister Act. That is true. But that's not dampened the excitement

for the Christmas episode that will be coming up coming up uh of Gavin and Stacey I suppose how did you come to the decision that it has to end well do you know it's funny I I'm so thrilled by how much people love it it's a it's a huge huge compliment and always has been and you know even we had sort of 10 years away from it uh and and when it came back people were so excited and then now we've had we'll have had five years away from it and people still seem to be excited and it's it's a real real compliment um and i i just don't know i just don't know you know how it will be the end um people will i will people still say to me is there going to be any

more covenancy i don't know because they've been asking that question for for years and i've said no because until you know for definite that it can happen you can't say anything i know and we we had um it was unfortunate that somebody decided to leak it to the press that we were developing this Christmas special. And it was unfortunate because James and I wanted to give everybody a nice surprise. And I think it was really mean that they leaked it because also it meant that I had to lie to people. I had to lie to friends and family because they were all saying,

oh, is it happening? Is it happening? And the reality is that until you have your cast booked, you have the budget worked out, all of those things, you cannot say categorically, yes, it's going to happen. And it's a lot easier sometimes to be creative without public scrutiny. Absolutely. Absolutely. We wanted to write the script without telling anybody, which is what we've done. We did it with the last special because rather than saying, oh, going to the BBC and saying, would you like another special?

Because then we'd have the pressure to come up with it, whereas we just wanted to know if we had something to say. So it's a real shame that that journalist decided to leak that story. But hey, they did. And then I felt so awful. I mean, I had to go on radio in Ireland when I was promoting Sister Act. And I had to just say, no, no, no, it's a rumour because it's it's still technically was a rumour. But also until you have the goods to be able to deliver on what the question is they're asking you, I know.

So until that night when we took a photo in my dressing room in the Sister Act in the Dominion Theatre because James is rehearsing for a play, I'm performing Sister Act in the night. So the only time we had was this 20-minute window. He had to come to my dressing room after his rehearsals and took a picture of us with the script and that was literally the first day

we were actually able to say, yes, it's happening. So we told them when we knew for sure. If you say, and I'm saying it big, if you say goodbye to Nessa, what do you think you will miss most about her? Is there, I don't know, a phrase that she uses or something about her? I think there's so't know, a phrase that she uses or something about her? I think there's so much about Nessa I love as a character.

I think mainly that she really does not care to hoot what anybody thinks. Or never did. Never did. Or never will. Never will. And I love that about her. And there is a little, tiny little nod to Nessa

in Sister Act, actually, in the second act, because it just felt right that she should just have a tiny little place there. So she's part I think she's she's sort of she's always there. I often use little Nessa lines if I want to, you know, divert somebody. Usually I said, well, if I want to tell somebody to back off. Ruth Jones speaking to Nuala. And Sister Act the Musical is on at the Dominion Theatre in London until August the 31st, with Ruth playing Mother Superior until August the 3rd.

Now on Thursday, it was a big day in the world of women's sports. The Netball Super League, the UK's elite level domestic competition, has relaunched and is about to embark on what it calls a new era of transformational change. Eight teams have been selected to take part from 2025 and this is all part of what the league hopes is a significant step towards the professionalisation of netball. Well, I was joined by CEO of London Pulse Netball,

one of the game's big three teams, and former England player Sam Bird, and Clare Nelson, Managing Director of the Netball Super League. And I started by asking Clare what they'd announced. It's a big day. It's been a day long in the coming, but we were delighted after nine months of a really robust and quite detailed and often challenging tender process, we announced the eight clubs who have been successfully awarded a place to participate

in the newly relaunched league next year. So you say this is part of a 10-year plan towards professionalisation. Tell us what that looks like, what's going to happen over the next decade. It seems like a long time as well. It does. And look, we always talk about we've got to be transformational yet sustainable. So the clubs that we've selected need to make big leaps next year. And it's all about the fan proposition and the product. We want to really drive that on court product and proposition. So we have fans show up week in, week out. We create this amazing broadcast property. We're going to move more of our games into arenas. Hopefully, at least 50% of games are played in arenas, all of them available to watch. So these are big, big steps forward, but we can't do it all from day one. So whilst we're driving these improvements

in the product and the game, whilst we will be paying our players more, we can't do everything on day one. So hopefully, if we get this right, we can grow the fan power we've got three million people playing our sport week in week out if we can start to transfer them into real fans of this incredible product it will start to unlock the commercials and hopefully it doesn't take us 10 years to get there but we've got to be smart in our approach yeah most of us played it at school yeah uh sam bird i'm going to bring you in your ce're CEO of London Pulse Netball. One of the eight teams have been selected for the league. Well. So we've already got some really good partners in place. We play at the Copper Box Arena on the Olympic Park. We're already producing big fan bases. So we had 3,500 fans come in to watch our game

against Loughborough Lightning. But we really want to push on and we think this is the right thing to do with the professional process. We can't expect to produce world-class athletes if they're training in the morning, going to work all day, training at night and then they're just pretty exhausted. So this is a fantastic opportunity for women and girls to see netball as a genuine career pathway in time to come. Well you just mentioned there the training in the morning, training at night.

What about your own personal experience, Sam? How did you get the balance between the sport that you love and you're passionate about and your pretty serious job as a lawyer? Yeah, so I can remember when I had my first England cap, I was given a pair of socks. So my first England netball outing was, I was just so happy to be given a pair of socks. So my first England netball outing was I was just so happy to be given a pair of socks. We had no kit, no money. So we've come a long way just in one generation. And as an England athlete, I obviously needed a career as well.

So I worked for as a lawyer for the Metropolitan Police for 20 years. Lucky now to be a CEO of Netball and throw all my time into Netball. And we've got athletes within our pathway. Zara Everett, for example, works at Ashurst. And then we've got other amazing world-class athletes like Femifa Doju. So we want to be able to provide Netball

as a genuine career prospect. And we back the brand. We back Netball as a genuine career prospect and we back the brand we back netball as an amazing sport and London Pulse are really excited to be part of pushing this forward to genuine professionalization and I'm going to come back to Claire in a second to talk about what that means but and of course we need to move to professionalization and to increase things like salary which we'll discuss so that you don't have to do the things that sam was talking about you know juggle a career and a passion but we need to also discuss the how amazing time management tenacity of women to be able to do this as well as you know everything else you've got on your plate yeah absolutely there's some amazing women involved

in our club at the club and clubs across the country that do have multiple roles. You know, there'll be caregivers as well. They'll be working, either looking after parents or children or both, holding down a full-time career and then performing at top class level, either as athletes or as staff, as coaches, physios, what have you. So we really are spinning a lot of plates. Yeah, superhuman. But we don't want that to be the case, do we? So how is this professionalisation going to help? Let's talk about that.

Well, we don't, but choice is really important here. So that's why we talk about it's a phased journey because actually we do have people who are A&E doctors, GPs. There are students in their professional careers. So where we're launching from day one is we are introducing a new salary structure, reducing our squad sizes. We're improving the payment level. We are more than doubling the minimum pay and increasing the average salary by more than 60%. We're improving the programme.

And by creating this new model of less clubs and smaller squad sizes, these athletes anyway are going to be playing in the best competition week in, week out. But we've got to make sure that there's choice in all of that choice, professional choice, educational choice, also choices to be mothers and to return to court. So we're trying to think of that whole piece. So absolutely, we want rewarding careers. Professionalisation is full-time athletes. But as we move through this transition, we can't take away what actually is really significant parts of some of our existing most talented athletes' lives. Sam, does it concern you that more and more girls are choosing to play football? Yes and no. I mean, as a female sport, we tend to want to raise each other up. So we're delighted to see other female sports thrive as well. And we certainly believe in a sort of multi-sport approach for young athletes. So young girls should try everything. We know there are low numbers of female athletes taking part in any type of physical activity. So we would promote that. But I think the visibility and the standard of the new Super League

will inspire young girls to play. And one of our amazing things is how diverse we are. Diversity, but also netball is predominantly, Claire, women's sport. Football, cricket and rugby, all popular with men. Do you think that's what makes it special? It's our superpower and I'm so proud of it. We are women's sport at every single level. And it's also a challenge because we don't have as, you know, the scale of visibility and the broadcast figures, but we have 3 million people playing this sport. Behind men and women's football

combined, then men and women's cricket combined comes netball. And as you said, most people have paid it at home. We're 52% of the population. And so as we emerge on this journey, right now we've said, right, here's the clubs who have got the investment, the infrastructure, the ambition, the venues to move forward into the future. But now we get to co-create, design what that looks like. And it will be built for women and girls of the future. Sam Bird and Claire Nelson talking to me earlier this week. Now to Gambia in West Africa where a bill which would lift the ban on female

genital mutilation has worked its way through Parliament reaching the final stages. Considered by some to be religious or a cultural tradition FGM can involve removing the clitoris and, in its most severe form, cutting and stitching the genitals. According to UNICEF, 73% of women and girls in Gambia have survived the procedure, and the government could be set to make a decision by the end of the summer. So what sort of impact has this discussion had, and what are the wider consequences for women in the UK and beyond? Well, Fatou Balde is an activist and founder of Women in Liberation and Leadership, an organisation which works with communities in Gambia to counter FGM misinformation and to support survivors. Fatou joined me yesterday and I began by asking her why this potential

change in the law is happening now. In the Gambia, female genital mutilation was banned back in 2015. Unfortunately, we do know that even though the ban has already been established, there were still girls being caught on the ground. Last August, we had the first successful prosecution of three women who were caught cutting several girls. And this conviction resulted in a backlash where religious leaders saw what those women were doing as a religious obligation, a traditional and cultural obligation, and therefore called on the Gambian government to repeal the law of 2015.

And since then, the National Assembly, that's the MP, has taken over the conversation and they've tabled a bill to amend the 2015 ban of female genital mutilation and to legalise the practice again in the Gambia. The overhaul should have its final reading in the upcoming months. Are you surprised by how quickly this has passed through? Surprised and not so much surprised. In fact, for many activists, we feared that the law, when it was tabled the first time, they would repeal the law

because we know that FGM is very much supported at the community level. But we also know that our parliament is made up of a majority of men who actually support the continuation of the practice. So we were anxious, but luckily, civil society, survival-led organizations took over from the moment we saw this threat and we've been advocating, lobbying National Assembly members. So we've not stopped since then. And I think without the proactive engagement of civil society and women-led organisations, this bill would have happened a long time ago. You've been giving evidence to Parliament yourself in Gambia.

What's the reaction been like from politicians? Yes, I think often for decades, one of the things that we've had in the Gambia is the denial that female genital mutilation does affect women and girls. Unfortunately, the way that FGM is perpetuated, women are also silenced not to share how FGM impacts them. So because of that, women have been very silent. There is a big taboo around female genital mutilation.

So this is why it's so important that survivors like myself were able to go to the parliament and share our experience of how female genital mutilation affects women, both at the personal level, but also because we work with other survivors and we've seen firsthand evidence as to how FGM affects people. I mean, as you mentioned yourself, you are a survivor of FGM. Would you mind telling us a bit about your story? And I'm intrigued when I realised that it wasn't until much later in life that you realized that you'd undergone FGM yourself. Is that right? practice is not just the cutting itself, it's the fact that I was made so excited. I was told it's a day that I was going to be very special. I had new outfits. I had my hair braided. I saw female members of my family. And then the next minute I was blindfolded and pinned down on the floor by a group of women and my genitals were cut. So that's not just the pain, but also

the betrayal. And I also say to people that when you take an eight-year-old girl and pin her down on a dirty floor and cut the most intimate part of her body, you are telling her that is what she's what. You are telling her her body is meant to be violated. And this is why we see that many women like myself, when we grow up, when women start then experiencing other forms of violence, you are reminded that you are supposed to be silent because when you were eight or even younger, people who were close to you violated your body, tricked you and violated your body, people closest to you, and you were told to be silent about that. So those consequences continue to affect you, affect you in your future relationship with others, affects your mental health. But obviously,

as you would imagine, for such thing to happen to a young girl you continue to live with different health complications and once once that violation is done on you you you you can't move away from those complications. And when did you realize this Fatou? When did you have the awakening that this was done to you? Yes so for me actually growing up everybody I knew had female genital mutilation done to them. So it was the norm for me. I grew up in a household where everybody I knew had undergone female genital mutilation. But it was until when I went to do my master's. Actually, I did my master's in Edinburgh, Queen Margaret University.

And on one of the modules, we were looking at violence against women. And the lecturer started talking about this practice called female genital mutilation. And I remember sitting in the class and thinking, this thing happened to me, but it's not mutilation. What happened to me was like culture, like tradition. And I think that was the first time I had someone else give me a different perspective of what female genital mutilation means and what it does to women. And I think for me, that also informs my work today. This is why I feel it's so important for young girls to be educated about their bodies and how FGM affects them. Because for me, it was through that education that really opened my eyes and turned my work to the activism that I do.

Yeah, and and very very important work and when I was reading your story that really struck me because it made me think about how deep deeply rooted and how conditioned everyone is to how this is normalized and I wonder what the conversations are with other women and young women when you are going out and about doing the work. What are the conversations happening between women? Yeah. And how hard it is to change. Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, sorry. So for a very long time, as I said, for us, when we are caught, we are told not to speak about what happened to us. So women never really share their experiences. In fact, women are shamed if they ever sit down to talk about FGM or how it affects them. So some of the things that we are doing, we are breaking that culture of silence and that taboo around female genital mutilation, where we create safe spaces for young women, but also for older women. Because what you tend to find in communities where so many women are caught, even though they would be experiencing problems as a result of female

genital mutilation, but because so many women are having those same issues, they tend to think that this is as a result of being a woman rather than it's because of FDM. So when we engage communities, we bring medical professionals who are able to interpret this relationship as to you are experiencing this as a woman because of what happened to you as a child,

because you are stitched clothes or because your labia were removed or because, you know, they are able to also bring out how this affects women when they are pregnant or giving birth. So we are able to send bring out how this affects women when they are pregnant or giving birth. So we are able to send that message out there.

We also use the same opportunity to bring religious leaders, as you may be aware, in the Gambia. The misconception is that FGM is a requirement of Islam. So when we engage communities, we also bring these people so that they can talk to the communities and demystify those myths. I mean, you mentioned at the beginning that religious leaders have played a big role in this debate. bring these people so that they can talk to the communities and demystify those myths. I mean, you mentioned at the beginning that religious leaders have played a big role in this debate, but there's also this idea of Western influence on Gambian politics. Is that something that you hear a lot about? Absolutely. Especially people like me who have been educated, for example, in the UK and come back, we often get that. But I see that as an attack and a way to silence activists and women's rights defenders

because we don't see that same narrative being pulled on other people doing other work. Why is that being said to us? Because we are challenging gender norms. We are challenging traditions. That's why that interpretation is given to us. At the end of the day, female genital mutilation is identified internationally as a form of violence against women, a human rights violation. And The Gambia is not an island. We are part of the international community and our government, our country needs to be held accountable for putting young girls through this harmful traditional practice in the name of religion. Yeah, you mentioned it's international. Well, FGM has been illegal here in the UK since 1985. And yet there's only ever been two convictions. The most

recent was in February of this year. Why is it so hard to convict? Yes, I think for communities that practice FGM, just like in the Gambia, it's on the ground when families return their daughters back home. And I think this is why this whole issue in the Gambia should be a problem for the international community, especially the UK, because we have a huge Gambian population. And we know that when families return home, they are usually pressured, especially in the summer, they are pressured to cut their girls in the summer, in the Christmas holidays when families return home. I have had even here in the Gambia, many women who are on holidays from the UK contact me, even when the law was already here, that their families are under threat. Their families are pressuring them to cut their daughters. So we are already having that with the law. Can you imagine what would happen if that law is repealed?

And I think the reason that, for example, in the UK, it's difficult to convict is that when families, what structures are put in place to make sure that families are monitored when they return home because I know that for those young girls who may be at risk or who may be caught while on holidays they are also silenced the same way I was silenced not to speak about what happened to me. And Fatah you've spoken it filled us in on all of it but also you spoke very openly about your own experience I just wonder how you are. It's been, and this is not just me,

I speak to a lot of other survivors, it's very re-triggering for us. You know, also that we have come a long way fighting this practice for decades and all our efforts are being rolled back. But also the most painful thing is to hear how men continue to trivialize female genital mutilation. One member of parliament said to me that, why are you making a fuss about this?

This is like clipping a nail from your finger. You don't even feel the cut. A nail has no nerve, what we are doing. So those are the kind of sentiments as a survivor, to hear a man who will never know what it feels like to live as a woman who's experienced FGM, having those comments about what happened to me is painful. A very powerful interview there.

That was Fatou Balde talking to me from Gambia. Still to come on the programme, music from Grammy and Tony Award winning songwriter, Onayus Mitchell. And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, all you need to do is head to BBC Sounds and subscribe to our daily podcast.

We welcome you. Now from the pre-Raphaelites to Picasso, Vermeer to Freud, some of the most famous Western artwork involves an artist's muse. Usually a woman and nearly always painted by a man, the muse is considered more than an artist's model. She is his inspiration and she is sometimes his sexual partner too. So who are the muses who've inspired great art? How do they embody an artist's vision?

And why has the muse-artist relationship at times led to the abuse of power? Well, on Monday, Nuala and her guests discussed all these questions. Among them was Penelope Tree, one of the most famous models of the 1960s and the muse of her then-boyfriend, the photographer David Bailey. Despite appearing on the cover of Vogue and being credited by Bailey with kickstarting the flower power movement, Penelope's life became increasingly difficult as their relationship began to flounder. These events have inspired Penelope's loosely biographical novel, Peace of My Heart. Here's Nuala having a chat with Penelope. She began

by asking her how she felt about being described as a muse. Well, I mean, nobody ever said to me, you are a muse at the time. I, you know, it's the last thing on my mind and I didn't consider it really. But in fact, I had two different experiences because the first photographer who I worked with and did a lot of work with, and we had sort of quite a deep relationship, was 30 years older than me. He was called Richard Avedon. Of course. And I was 18, he was 48.

It was not a romantic relationship at all. And he asked to do some test shots of me, and I stood on the white paper sort of shaking. And he looked through the lens. And I don't know, something happened. I felt this huge connection between us, which was really palpable. And he inspired me so much. I was 18. I was just experiencing life as an adult for the first time. And, you know, it was exciting. And also, you know, he taught me a lot. And so that was a wonderful experience.

Then I met David Bailey. And the first time that I worked with him, there was this very sexual, very electrical communication between us. And that really informed the photographs that we did together. And we then became a couple and we traveled around the world. We had a wonderful couple of years together. And then the relationship started to change. And he was working with other models as well of whom I was very jealous because I was not allowed to work with anybody else. He said? Yes. So at that time and

of course I don't have David Bailey here to respond but. No I know. Sorry Bailey. Is that what you call it? We've had it out. I mean, don't worry. We're very good friends. But the thing is that the more that I became sort of my own person, he became more and more sort of directive. And I've struggled against that. I've fought and we started to fight a lot when we were working. Sometimes that was a good thing, but mostly it wasn't. Do you think, looking back on that time, the conversation we've had so far,

were you a collaborator? Do you think that's a better word than muse? I feel like I was a collaborator with Richard Avedon. He made me feel like that. He made the whole team feel like they were collaborators, which is a wonderful thing about working in fashion, is that sometimes when a team works together, you have this great sense of, you know, cooperation and that you're making something beautiful together. So that was one side.

And then with Bailey, it wasn't quite so much that way. He wanted to see things his own way. He wanted to, you know, he wanted the light just so he wanted me to pose just so. And I found that quite sort of suffocating, which you could characterize as because you were an artist in your own right is what I'm hearing. Artistic differences. Yeah, we did. We had artistic differences. I wanted to be a bit more free in the way that I worked with him, and he just didn't want that.

What was it, do you think, you gave as a muse to David Bailey? Was it just looks? Oh, I think that we had a connection, and when you have a connection with a photographer, or I assume an artist, that must change the photograph in some way rather than if it's just a model who comes in and, you know, leaves again. Can you describe that connection? What is it? Is it like that? Okay, we're both working on the same project. How would you describe the feeling? It's quite sort of other world. It's like you're in another dimension suddenly with that person. And there's a kind of sense of freedom and creativity and that you're dancing with that photographer or whoever it is that you're working with. And I always found that exciting and very hard to

describe, you know, because it isn't at that moment based on sex. It isn't based on romance. It's something else. It's a creative act. But it did end that period of you being a muse. I'm wondering what that was like or how that happened. Well, it's a long story, but in fact, I think my whole body and soul sort of rebelled and I manifested this really quite extreme acne attack,

which sort of disfigured my face for a while and it certainly ended my career. And then it ended my relationship with Bailey sort of about a year later. How difficult that must be though because you were a woman that was known for your looks right we've talked about Richard Avedon we talked about David Bailey we can talk about Truman Capote as well I mean what a life you have lived. But your skin was the thing that changed and changed everything in its wake. That's true. And, you know, there's a great quote, celebrity is the mask that eats into the face. And in my case, it was literal, you know, but I think that sometimes you have to,

you have to listen to your body and your body is telling you things that you're unconscious of. And in my case, that was certainly true. And I think it was because I had to kind of wake up. I had to wake up and actually make my own way through life, not dependent on a male, not dependent on my appearance and looks. And that was a long process. But I think I've got there. Talking about this power imbalance that there can be with muses, did you feel you were passive? I do. Yes, I have to say I do feel like I was passive. Can you tell me a little bit

more about that? Oh, well, I think that I was very much in the thrall of men at the time. And, you know, that's the way I was brought up in many, many ways. And I think that's my generation. Perhaps a lot of women felt that way. Women weren't as educated asued with ambition to become a sort of CEO of a company or whatever it is so you're more dependent on men unless you had a real sort of inner spark to do something on your own question oh god sorry Eliah go ahead yeah um I wondered if you feel as though you gained anything from those experiences of being amused to two different photographers. Did they help your career in any way, do you think? Well, yeah, I've got a book out of it, haven't I? So eventually, yes. But I also feel that I got so much out of the relationships with Bailey and with Richard Avedon and other photographers too

because there is a kind of connection between models and photographers sometimes that happens quite magically in that moment and I found that always to be quite inspiring. Let's talk about you being a teenager because you caused a sensation at the Truman Capote's black and white ball you were just 16 then do you want to tell us about that? I don't know how much there is to tell you, except that I was 16. I'd known Truman Capote since I was 13. He was very kind to me once when I asked him about writing. And I was very surprised to get an invitation.

And it was an incredible spectacle that he put on. It was extraordinary. People coming from all over, you know, Europe and Hollywood and New York intellectuals all mixing together, which kind of hadn't happened before. And people had spent months getting themselves together in their costumes and everything. And there were no other people my age. So it was a sort of adults' party. It was people like Norman Mailer,

who had a fight with Mac George Bundy, who was the national security advisor to the US at the time. What a party. Yeah, it was thrilling. How did you have Truman Capote's address? Oh, sorry. I met him through my parents. He came to lunch at my parents' house.

So your parents were quite well connected. Yes, they were. It was a party for Babe Paley, who was one of the swans. They are one of, how do we describe them? The women that were around Truman Capote. The muses. Yes, muses, really. The muses of Truman Capote, yeah.

Penelope Tree's book is a piece of my heart, and it's out now. And you can hear the full programme, all about muses, on BBC Sounds. Look for the programme dated the 27th of May. Now, earlier this week nula was joined by the grammy award-winning tony award-winning bbc radio 2 folk award-winning songwriter anais mitchell she's been releasing music since 2002 but more recently you might know her for being the creator of haidstown a genre-defying musical retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, blending folk music and New Orleans jazz.

Currently playing on Broadway and in London's West End. So I went last night and that was Hades, who is king of the underworld, who sang it. And some people have talked about that song and whether, of course, we always heard about a

wall when it came to Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016. But you had this song before that. Yeah, this is kind of one of the first songs I wrote for the show back in 2006. And yeah, it was wild because 10 years later, we were heading for our off-Broadway production of Hadestown. And it just coincided with, you know, the campaign and then the winning of the election by Trump. And I never expected to hear that kind of language coming out of, you know, our leader's mouth. Yeah, and perhaps also because Donald Trump is a great communicator, but there's also sometimes when I speak to people who very much support him, he is a mythical figure. Right. He was tapping into something, I guess. Yeah. Something resonating for some people.

When you started working on Hadestown almost 20 years ago, I was asking some of my listeners for stuff that they persevered with and they're coming in in droves. But where did the idea first come from? It was kind of one of those mystical things, you know, when you're writing a song and like something drops out of the sky. I got some lines that seemed to be about this myth. And I think I was hungry to try to tell

a longer form story with songs. I also was like, I was in my early 20s. I was right out of school. I was kind of like an idealist and a dreamer and an artist and coming up against the real world, you know. And there's something inherent, I think, in the Orpheus story. It's like this coming of age story about this young man who hopes that he can make something beautiful enough that he can change the rules ofheus story. It's like this coming of age story about this young man who hopes that he can make something beautiful enough that he can change the rules of the world. And take us to Hadestown. How would you describe it? Hadestown, the underworld, like what?

A little of both, perhaps. Yeah. Well, so it's obviously it's based on Greek mythology. It's sort of a tale of two couples. There's Orpheus and Eurydice, these young lovers. And then there's this kind of ruined marriage between the gods Hades and Persephone, the king of industry and the queen of nature. And so Hadestown represents sort of a place of relative wealth and security. And Eurydice, rather than being bitten by a snake and dying, which is what happens in the original myth, she makes a conscious choice to go to this place of security and she leaves her lover behind. And I'm not going to give away the ending of your particular musical, but do you feel there's a message or a morality tale in it?

If there's anything like a moral, I think it's, well, yeah, you know, Orpheus, he's, not to give it away, but he's a hero to us all, but not because he succeeds in the end. It's really the fact that he tries. He tries to do an impossible thing, to change the world.

And I think if there's a moral to Hadestown, it has something to do with the importance of continuing to try because he's still a hero for us. And you sort of get the feeling that like someone else is going to try next. Like there's a baton pass that's going on. Did you ever think the show would be so big? I mean, I was there last night. These are adoring fans. I'd love to know what would happen if you just walk through that theatre. know how much effort went into it. And it also doesn't feel like mine at all. You know, when I go and I see fans of the show and people that are sort of dressed up as the characters, I'm like, I have no idea what this show means to those people. Your style to me, I just met you a few minutes ago in the bathroom, for being completely transparent. But your style looking at you reminds me of a mythical creature. I love that. You know, it's very much in line with what I felt I saw on stage last night. I think you could blend right in there.

Oh, thank you. That means something. Thank you. There were a lot of women involved in developing Hadestown. Talk me through a little of what that process was like. Yeah, well, so the main sort of important collaborator in the phase where I was working in New York and doing workshops and sort of readying the piece for Off-Broadway and then for Broadway and then for West End is, of course, Rachel Chavkin, the director. And, yeah, I didn't set out to find a female director. I just, I was in Ars Nova, this tiny theater in New York,

and I saw a Dave Malloy piece called The Great Comet of 1812 and was just so blown away by the visual storytelling in that show. And I said, whoever this director is, you this is this is what I want this is the person and it turned out it was it was Rachel and um we also had two our two lead producers um Mara Isaacs and Dale Franzen um are women who had never taken a show to Broadway so there was a lot of kind of just all of us putting our faith in each other But it is still such a male-dominated arena. It is. Yeah, it remains that way, especially New York musical theatre.

But it's changing all the time. And I have a dear friend, Shana Taub, who has a new musical called Suffs, which she wrote and stars in. It's just changing all the time. Also, what about the female characters in the show? You know, we mentioned them there briefly, Eurydice and Persephone. How would you describe them to our audience? Yeah, certainly, like we made an effort to give these women more agency than they would

have had in the classical myths. Eurydice in the original myth, kind of all you really know about her is that she's beautiful and Orpheus is madly in love with her and then she dies, you know. And of course, as I said, in this telling of the tale, she makes a conscious decision to go to Hadestown. And Persephone is also, you know, kind of a victim in the original mythology. She is abducted by Hades. And in this telling, there's more focus on her as this queen that is sort of in equal stature to Hades. And she also is kind of a ruined character.

The idea is that the trouble in their marriage is creating the troubles in the world. And Hades is sort of the engine of the problem. He's this compulsive industrialist and he's the engine of the problem, but she's not blameless. She's sort of a flawed character and she kind of numbs herself with the fruit of the vine. Fruit of the vine, alcohol, a.k.a. It was helpful for her to be flawed, basically. It made her more full as a character. After the success, though, of Hadestown,

is there another musical in the works? You know, I've been enjoying... This thing took so much of my life, and I thought, oh, maybe I'm never going to make records again, never going to tour again with music. And gratefully, like I've been able to get back to that. I have a new record coming out with my band, Bonnie Light Horseman. Bonnie Light Horseman. Love that name.

Yeah, but I am working on a play with music. So 13 years from now, I'll be right back here. I'll still be here. That was Anais Mitchell talking to Nuala. And Hadestown is at the Lyric Theatre in London now. And Bonnie Light Horseman's new album, Keep Me On Your Mind, See You Free, is out in June.

That's it from me. On Monday, Nuala is joined by Dion Brown, who plays Queenie in the new series on Channel 4, adapted from the very popular book of the same name, written by Candice Carty-Williams. Please enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.