Sarah K Whitfield

@sarahinthepark

Reader in Musical Theatre, Head of Doctoral Programmes at RCM, mum, data and digital humanities nerd, music ed advocate, tea drinker. About covers it

320 Siguiendo393 Seguidores196 Publicaciones

Bluesky

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Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· 14d

I hear it's #internationalcatday so here are my pair enjoying a very brief truce that immediately after this turned into a chase

A large black and white cat sits on a green sofa. He looks cautious. A smaller black and white cat is on her back showing a fluffy tummy, with an expression of touch me and regret it.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· 25d

see also....

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· 25d

'There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible'

a still from paddington 2, hugh grant is in a procession as a nun, the nuns are carrying candles.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· May 25

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Apr 10

Posted a thing on insta so will share it here, a little piece of writing on #Sondheim, friendship and loss.

She was a whirl of bright and extraordinary chaos. My god she loved Sondheim, with Jason Robert Brown’s musicals an extremely close second. She was an excellent pianist, far better than me, loud in the way musical theatre pianists can be. She told the most chaotic and elaborate lies about the most stupid things, you knew they were lies but it just didn’t matter.

The first time I went to New York I stayed with her, and she took me to a Jersey shopping mall to teach me about Mac makeup and how to curl my hair, all the things she thought I needed a remedial education in. She was younger than me, not by much, but enough to enjoy helping me in what felt like a teenage movie musical montage. She drove into Manhattan (it could have been for my benefit) and her car got impounded: I ended up bailing it out for her at the city pound (her dad paid me back the next morning).

I loved her. She was the least sensible person I could ever have come across. I’ll call her Jodie. For all the parts of Jodie, one of them was that she was dependent on alcohol and had been for most of her adult life.

She was full of trouble and sparkled like the light on water.

The very last time I saw her I was staying in a cheap hotel on East 51st, not far from Sondheim’s townhouse. I played it too cool to wander by the brownstone. I mean not that cool, since a) I knew where it was and b) I knew that the park Sondheim memorialised in Company was on the same street as my hotel. The park is a tiny oasis in the aggressive heat of the city. It’s really the absence of a building, a protected tiny square with a waterfall on one side, and some trees and plants, or as Sondheim painted it: ‘a little pocket park’. In Company it’s where Kathy takes Bobby to break up with him, to tell him she can’t continue living in the chaos of New York, she has to go back to something real upstate. It’s meant to symbolise everything that Bobby can’t be and Kathy is, in the city but not of it.

Jodie was in and of the city. If you could have zoomed into her DNA, woven into it would have been tiny decorative Empire State Building snow globes. For someone who I met maybe five, six times in my life, no more, she cut a shape in my heart. I think I fascinated her, with my Britishness. She called me Sar-Bear and there is no one before or since who I’d let get away with that. Maybe she loved me too.

The last time we met, we sat in the park and I had a coke, and she was thirsty so I offered her some, and she said she wasn’t drinking right now, she couldn’t have any. I was confused, it’s just coke, nothing added?

The gulf between the pain I knew it was possible to experience and the pain she had inside of her was suddenly out in front of us in this tiny glimmer of a place. She died a little while back, much loved by her family and her friends.
***

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Dec 29

extraordinary 1921 census record... secret service milliner? They must have needed hats... #history

census occupation says 'Christian & Secret Service, Millinery and toy maker, Composer and designer, artist'

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Nov 21

Come along to the book launch at the perfect setting of the Back to Backs in Brum. I'll be there talking about theatre cleaners writing the empty stage! www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/birmin...

A picture of the back to backs from the street frontage, with an inserted image of the cover of the book "British working class and radical writing since 1700"

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Sep 5

I feel more called out than I needed to be

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Aug 25

Meanwhile ProQuest has moved into direct check ins or... threats?

pop up says - "create a my research account? you've been working for a long time, why not create a my research account to save your work?"

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Aug 25

Historic theatre listing or a description of a Phd?

immense aggregation of curiosities and marvels, representing the accumulations of a lifetime of careful study, unremitting labor, and a lavish expenditure of money

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Jul 15

got to have a serious photo for a work thing, and this may be one of the best options.

me a woman in a pink leopard print jumper, smiling, next to a model raptor, also smiling.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Jun 6

In reference to the headlines doing the rounds from the Guardian story this morning, we've been here before. Queer history is not a straight line. What happens to our trans family happens to us all.

Liverpool Daily Post - Sat 20 December 1980, 'No gay rights' at work, Homosexuals do not have the right to protection recommended in a Common Market ruling on sex discrimination at work, a Government Minister said yesterday. Employment Under-Secretary Mr Patrick Mayhew said in a Commons written reply he had no intention of seeking to extend the directive from the LLC to cover homosexuals.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Mar 22

Post your favourite Doctor Who, wrong answers only...

Black and white photo of Bertolt Brecht, Not doctor who, in Paris in the 1950s

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Mar 18

Amid the gloom, this might be my favourite book cover I've seen for a long time, check out the Guinness label #ordinancesurvey

It's a book cover with a dog with his tongue wide out, as if drinking a guiness. Except the guiness is called 'Gravybones nectar'. The book is called Dog Friendly Walks in Cheshire.

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Feb 22

Spring will come....

Sarah K Whitfield@sarahinthepark· Dec 24

"You'll be visited by three spirits" The three spirits: