Running with Scissors by Ronnie Conboy – Alma Tavern Theatre

Captivating storytelling celebrating trailblazing women surgeons

Robbie Conboy is a spellbinding storyteller. She has a wonderful stage presence causing a sold-out audience at the Alma Tavern Theatre to lean into her every word.

A former orthopaedic surgeon NHS surgeon for 35 years now turned storyteller, Ronnie brings her wit and wisdom to Bristol with her gentle show Running With Scissors.

It’s a celebration of the early trailblazing women who fought through prejudice and discrimination to study medicine and work as surgeons.

In modern medicine, women had every patriarchal door closed to them. But, through the course of the show, we learn about those extraordinary women who complained, wrote endless letters, learned law, found loopholes and fought their way into medical school and then into the profession.

We start way back with the healers and midwives, the ones who were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

We had Dr. James Barry, the woman who took on the identity of a man. She attended medical school and joined the army as a medical officer, rising through the ranks to Inspector General of military hospitals.

In 1826, she was the was the first recorded person in the British Empire to successfully perform a Caesarean section where both both mother and child survived.

There were the women who found their way to war zones, set up hospitals and charities. Where there was war there were women surgeons to be found.

Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson set up the Endell Street Military Hospital. They recruited enough women to staff the entire hospital with women. From surgeons to cleaners, all were women. And Suffragettes.

The hospital took on the motto “Deeds not words”. It was the rallying cry for both the Suffragettes and a hospital of women hopeful that their work would prove women equally worthy of accessing the medical profession.

The show packs in a fascinating history, told over the course of an hour. Ronnie also talks about the discrimination and challenges she faced as a women surgeon, including the issues and harassment women continue to face now.

Come the end, she centres the attention back onto all of the women she has engaged us with. You can almost see them and sense them in the shadowy edges of the stage. The incredible women who drove progress and kept the ladder down for all of those that came after.

A wonderfully entertaining piece of theatre.

Running With Scissors was on at the Alma Tavern Theatre

Follow Ronnie Conboy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronnie1c/

For more at the Alma Tavern Theatre: https://www.almatavernandtheatre.co.uk/

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