LOVE or knowledge? Which would you choose? Jessica Swale asks that very question in her play Blue Stockings, whose York premiere will be staged by York Settlement Community Players in the Theatre Royal Studio from March 1.

Premiered at The Globe Theatre in London in 2013, it now sets the scene for York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre’s forthcoming community production, Everything Is Possible, which features the stories of York suffragettes in 1913.

In Blue Stockings, Tess, Carolyn, Celia and Maeve are students at Girton, an all-female college of Cambridge University, from where they want to graduate like their male peers but it is 1896 and neither the academic establishment, nor most of society, is ready for this.

The prevalent scientific belief of the times was that women's brains were lighter and that if a woman studied too hard her womb would wither and die, as recorded in Jane Robinson's book Bluestockings that proved an invaluable research tool for Swale.

Against this backdrop, the Girton tutor nevertheless succeeds in bringing the students' campaign to a vote by the board of trustees, at the risk of endangering their circumstances further.

"The play chronicles this real event that coincided with the growing campaign for suffrage," says Settlement director Maggie Smales. "It was just one step on the road to equality of opportunity for women and was met with fierce and ugly opposition, culminating in a riot on the streets of Cambridge. The so called ‘bluestockings’ had a long way to go but their strong spirit and persistence was an important element in the story of suffrage, equality and emancipation for women."

Maggie is quick to draw a distinction between the Bluestockings and the term "blue stocking". "The Bluestockings were a group of learned women who used to meet in London, so it has none of the pejorative meaning it has now," she says.

The director trawled through "loads and loads of plays" before settling on Blue Stockings. "When I was given the brief to direct a play in the Studio and choose the play myself, I was thrilled, and the only caveat was that it would be good if it had links to a female agenda, although that was loosely expressed," she says.

"You have to think of the York audience, the Settlement agenda, a whole host of things, when choosing a play, and while I might at first have wanted something more cutting, the more I read Blue Stockings, the more I loved it, and I felt the York audience would love it too. Just because it's a light piece, it doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

"People don't want to be preached at right now, so if we're ever to get anywhere, it's better that it should be a comedy with a light touch and a bite underneath the surface. I like to think that it's a story with mainly youthful and young people looking to the future, and of course there's the connection with education, which is close to my heart.

"We can all associate with that thing of setting out, finding out who you are and what you are in this world, whether you went to university or not."

Maggie looks back to her own days of studying. "Just as the people with access to higher education were so few in 1896, even when I went to Breton Hall, I was in the top five per cent to be gaining that education," she says. "But it was a good time to be there; I overlapped with John Godber's time there. Crazy times. It was very 'Salad Days'! We were often described as 'clean hippies'!"

Returning her thoughts to Blue Stockings, Maggie says: "It's got a good plot, a good narrative and a great range of characters and it moves at a cracking pace," she says. "There isn't a huge amount of character development or depth but they're well drawn and they leap off the page, which has been a joy for everyone in rehearsals."

Blue Stockings will run in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, from March 1 to 11 at 7.45pm nightly plus a 2pm matinee on March 4. Tickets cost £14, concessions £12, on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk