Blue Stockings

A moving, comical and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women’s suffrage.

THIS SHOW WILL BE PERFORMED IN THE BLACKPOOL GRAND STUDIO 

Willow Theatre Productions presents Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale

It is 1896 at Girton College, Cambridge, the first residential college in Britain to admit women. The Girton girls study ferociously and match their male peers grade for grade. Yet, when the men graduate, the women leave with nothing but the stigma of being a ‘blue stocking’ – an unnatural, educated woman. They are denied degrees and go home unqualified and unmarriageable. Tess Moffat and her fellow first years are determined to win the right to graduate. But little do they anticipate the hurdles in their way: the distractions of love, the cruelty of the class divide or the strength of the opposition, who will do anything to stop them. The play follows them over one tumultuous academic year, in their fight to change the future of education.

They say you don’t have the capacity to be scholars. So read everything. Learn everything. Know the philosophers, and then think for yourselves.

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Blue Stockings is the engaging, spirited and shocking story of four young women fighting for their right to a university education in a world that assumed women belonged at home. First produced professionally at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2013, and a sell-out success, it is now regularly performed throughout the UK and beyond, and widely studied by GCSE drama students.

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Willow Theatre Productions is dedicated to putting women’s stories at the forefront, using works by female playwrights with strong female protagonists. They are known for creating intimate, powerful and thought-provoking pieces.

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After each performance we will be collecting for the Malala Fund in aid of women’s education around the world (www.malala.org).

This is an amateur production by arrangement with Nick Hern Books

If you love Drama, see what else we have coming to Blackpool Grand Theatre this season HERE