DIRECTORS Juliet Forster and Katie Posner are working with 300 people on York's community play for 2017, Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes.
The York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre co-production will feature around 135 in the cast, 100 in the choir, plus volunteers working in stage management, the costume department and the archive team that collected stories of the 20th century Suffragette movement in York from relatives of those involved.
Rehearsals for this month's production began at the Central Methodist Church in April and professional actor Barbara Marten joined the sessions on May 22 to lead the company in the role of Annie Seymour Pearson, the Heworth Green housewife who risked her life and her family to join the Suffragette movement in 1913 and was the only York Suffragette to be imprisoned.
"This is the first time we've done a community production that has a contemporary spin to it, as we didn't want to do just an historical account as we know that women did eventually get the vote," says Katie.
Directors' vew: Juliet Forster, left, and Katie Posner, watching a rehearsal for Everything Is Possible. Picture: Shaun Conway
"It had to be more than that," says Juliet. "We like making work that says why we're making it today," rejoins Katie. "Some of the things that the Suffragettes experienced are still being experienced across the globe by women today, and though we may be more privileged in this country, it's still unequal," suggests Juliet.
Katie and Juliet are passionate in their belief in the need for greater equality and women's rights. "We don't want to be gratuitous, but we want to present something that addresses that, with hope and a determination that change has to happen," says Katie. "That's how we're connecting back to the Suffragettes in this play."
Written by Bridget Foreman, Everything Is Possible tells the previously untold story of how York women joined in the Suffragette movement, as across the city they ran safe houses, organised meetings, smashed windows and fire-bombed pillar boxes.
"When we looked at the stories of women involved, what you see is that some of these women had comfortable lives and didn't have much to gain from it personally, but they joined the movement because they knew it was important to battle against something that they felt was unjust, believing there was a need for change," says Juliet.
Everything Is Possible: The York Suffragettes will run at York Theatre Royal from June 20 to July 1. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
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