About stitched-up-theatre
Stitched-up-theatre started when Red saw an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection showing the story of Mary Frances Heaton a 19th century piano mistress from Doncaster,who after challenging the vicar in church about late payment for music lessons, was imprisoned in Doncaster Gaol for the night, deemed a dangerous idiot and incarcerated for 41 years in Wakefield Asylum by the local magistrates without trial or conviction. During this time with no means of defence or advocacy her creative resolve led her to embroider messages in fellow patients’ clothes and on beautiful and ornate stitched samplers (eight of which are now exhibited in the Mental Health Museum, Wakefield) as a means of intending accounts of her injustice to be heard.
Red felt compelled to create the opera “The Unravelling Fantasia of Miss H.” in response. She recruited talented
colleagues and friends in collaboration and thus was born Stitched-Up-Theatre: telling women’s ‘herstories’ which deserved to be told, through the converging expressions of Physical and Musical Theatre, Opera, and Contemporary Classical genres -to create bold performance to alight the senses, stir the soul and move the heart.
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From the beginning the work took us into communities where women’s voices were struggling to be heard where stories of displacement and injustice resonated. We joined women as they shared their own stories and explored their voices in the world through stitching and singing workshops and performance participation.
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In development now with co-Artistic and Musical Director Bella Spinks, Stitched-Up turns its attention to the unseen footballing women of the early 20th century who paved the way for today’s women’s game in the face of blatant discrimination and struggle.