Hidden Stories is a double bill of exciting and empowering new one-act plays by female playwrights, directors, and performers, exploring little told and unseen stories.

NOW YOU SEE ME

By Carly Halse

The “hidden story” of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England. The year was 1955. Ruth Ellis openly admitted to the murder of her lover David Blakely who she shot at the Magdala pub in London. 

What is little know though is that Blakely was violent and controlling. A few days before the murder he had brutally beaten Ruth and she suffered a miscarriage. At a time when she needed support her close make friend Desmond Cussen gave her a gun and showed her how to use it. He was never called to account. Her case led to changes in the law recognising the defence of diminished responsibility.  

DARLINT PEIDI

By Rosemary Hill

Edith Thompson was executed in 1923 alongside her young lover Frederick Bywaters. Edith Thompson apparently knew nothing about the plan to murder her husband, Percy. Bywaters always maintained he acted alone. But Thompson was older than him and seen as an immoral seducer. She was also a dreamer who wrote letters to her lover describing their perfect life together after her husband was gone. Was she executed for adultery rather than murder, a victim of the social climate of the time? If she had lived through the swinging sixties would society have judged her differently?

Tags: 2023, friends, professional, spring, ThePlace