Information on our next
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 2019 production  below!
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OCTOBER
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Conservatoire de Musique et d'art Dramatique, Montreal

​ Blue Stockings   follows the story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women’s suffrage written by director and writer, Jessica Swale and first performed at the Globe theatre in 2013.

1896. Girton College, Cambridge, the first 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.

In Swale’s play, 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.

Persephone  Productions  is thrilled to be producing Blue Stockings with its deep connection to our world today.  Swale dedicates her play   to Malala Yousafzai

Featuring a cast of  12 actors and a  strong  design/technical team. This comedy with an underlying profound message is guaranteed to entertain and provoke discussion and thoughts

Directed by
 Gabrielle Soskin,  Artistic Director 

Olivia Woods, Assistant Director
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October 17 to 27 2019 .
Jessica Swale born 1982
  • Jessica is an award-winning playwright and director. She trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and the University of Exeter
  • Her plays include Nell Gwynn, which transferred to London’s West end, starring Gemma Arterton, and won the 2016 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, Blue Stockings, now a set text on the GCSE Drama syllabus.
  • Jessica set up Red Handed Theatre Company in 2005, to develop new plays and revive classics. As Artistic Director, productions included The Rivals starring Celia Imrie, the London première of Palace of the End by Judith Thompson, and the first major revival of Hannah Cowley’s The Belle Strategem, which won her a nomination for Best Director at the Evening Standard Awards. Red Handed won Best Ensemble at the Peter Brook Empty Space Awards, 2012.
  • Jessica was Associate Director to Max Stafford-Clark at Out of Joint from 2007-2010 and has directed at drama schools including RADA, LAMDA, Guildhall, Oxford School of Drama and East 15.
  • Jessica is an Associate Artist with Youth Bridge Global, an international NGO which uses theatre as a tool for promoting social change in war-torn and developing nations. As such, she has lived in the Marshall Islands and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, directing Shakespeare productions including The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night and the Tempest.
  • Jessica is now enjoying writing for the cinema. Current projects include Nell Gwynn for Working Title, The Horrible Histories Movie and Summerland, developed with BAFTA.
We  hope you make it  out to   Bluestockings. We would love to see the kind of support we did last Spring with the premier of    Counting Aloud ​and later of Abigail/1702. We absolutely rely on ticket sales to help sustain the company, but we also rely on your attendance to enrich the work experience of our artists. ​

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