Famous People You've Never Heard Of

For ten years Mulan, disguised as a man, has fought for the Chinese Empire, but now the fighting is coming to an end, one last battle and she will be going home - but can she return to her old life and become a woman again? A search for an identity in a violent world. This project is Michelle Yim’s third solo show commission. It has toured Fringe Festivals and many UK venues.

The Ballad of Mulan is the first in our se...

Nellie Bly was an American journalist who is famous for her record breaking 72 day round the world trip.⁠
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Before that though she went undercover into an "insane asylum" to report on the appalling conditions to which the patients were subjected.⁠
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This short play by JJ Leppink guesses what might have happened in the time leading up to Nellie's incarceration.⁠

This is the first in a season of 4 short ...

A while ago we spoke with Dr Mary Shannon about Billy Waters and Mary's upcoming biography of him - "Billy Waters is Dancing".

Well the book is now out (and a jolly fine read it is, too) and Mary has joined forces with historian Dr. Ben Marsh, artist Selena Scott and musician Angeline Morrison on the Age of Revolution's "Songs from the Shadows" project.

The project is a free educational resource intended...

Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1988);  Wikipedia says she was a "pianist".  She was.  She was also a composer and conductor (in fact she was the first female conductor of the band of the Royal Marines).   She was also the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Historian and author Stephen Bourne and musician and author Patricia Hammond talk about her  talent and her eventful  life in this episode. 

Find out...

We're delighted and privileged to be releasing today's podcast on the 200th anniversary of the death of Billy Waters.

Born in 1776 Waters was a familiar sight on the Strand in London.  He was a black ex-sailor who had been invalided out of the Navy after losing a leg.  With a crude wooden prosthesis he danced and also played the violin outside the Adelphi Theatre.  He became so famous that a whole industry g...

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)  was a British composer.

His mother was English and his father from Sierra Leone.  He referred to himself as "Anglo-African" and was referred to by white musicians in the US as the "Black Mahler", which is the title of the biography by  Charles Elford.
Coleridge-Taylor entered the Royal College of Music at the age of only 15 and was taught by Prof. Charles Villier...

Paula David's one woman show is a journey through menopause and a discovery of self.
It is poetic and musical, has movement and dance and examines something that all women experience and few have the courage to speak about.  It is also highly amusing!

Paula spoke to us about the show ahead of her one night at the Exchange in Twickenham on 29th March as part of the One Woman Wednesday season.

Book tickets ...

This one-woman show, based on the book and television series She-Wolves: The Women who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by historian Helen Castor, depicts the lives of five of England’s most famous medieval queens (Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and Mary I) using speech, song, dance, and animation.

Performer Laura Careless chats to us about how the show came about, what the sho...

Yootha Joyce, best known for "George and Mildred" was one of the best known TV stars of the 1970's.  But she was so much more...

Award -winning actress Caroline Burns-Cooke tells her story in the  brilliant one woman show "Testament of Yootha", showing for one night only at the Exchange in Twickenham on 22nd March as part of the One Woman Wednesday season to celebrate Womens History Month and Inter...

Isadora Duncan:  dancer, muse, innovator, political activist and so much more was born in the USA in 1877.  She died in Nice, France in 1927 in a freak accident that is sadly the thing that she seems to be most remembered for.  Well we want to change that!

Elizabeth Blake is an actress, dancer and choreographer.  She has written and is currently performing a one woman show about Isadora that has wowed audiences and critics...

Clara Schumann, a pianist, composer and piano teacher.  And wife of Robert Schumann.

Clara Wieck had a fascinating life- a child prodigy, like Mozart before her she was touring as a concert pianist under the watchful eye of her domineering father from a very young age.  She went on to marry Robert, have eight children and continue to work in the male dominated world of classical music until she died aged 76 having survived...

Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday was the name of a weekly comic strip which first appeared on 3 May 1884.   

Before Superman, Spiderman, Desperate Dan and  Dennis the Menace came Ally Sloper.  From 1884 until the 1920s, the red-nosed social climber who poked fun at the English people and their customs was a household name and national favourite.

Ally Sloper takes us into the realms of the first comic strip cha...

Who was Fred Karno?  and what was his army?

We talk to David Crump whose biography of today's subject reveals all - and some!

Karno was a giant personality who had a giant effect on theatre and cinema as we know it.  The man who gave  Stan Laurel, Charlie Chaplin and the Crazy Gang their first break and almost single handedly invented the type of slapstick we recognise in the silent movies had an eventful lif...

Back in the dark days of Lockdown number 2 at the end of 2020 Lottie and Linda were enjoying the TV series Harlots.  Whilst chatting about it Lottie remembered seeing the blue plaque that is dedicated to Priss Fotheringham, the "second best whore in London".  And the idea for a podcast episode was born!

For reasons many and varied it's taken us a whole year to bring the episode to you and we do hope you...

Amanda Ira Aldridge, one of the most important female composers of the 20th century has been all but forgotten.

Daughter of the groundbreaking actor Ira Aldridge,  Amanda, was also a singer and in her latter years a voice teacher.  One of her pupils was Paul Robeson who approached her when he cane to  the UK to play Othello.  He was only the second black actor to play the role.  Amanda's father Ira had been the f...

For this special episode  we've moved away from talking about our long forgotten heroes of history to talk to our very much up to date  award winning theatre-maker - and hero -  Christopher Green.

Christopher is a huge advocate of theatre as an experience and of the "all the world's a stage" ethos.  In this conversation we talk about experiential theatre, site-specific productions and  why  clear instru...

Fred Barnes was a huge star in his time, but his fame, fortune and undeniable glamour hid a tragic story and self-destructive nature.

Christopher Green and John Orchard talk to Lottie about Fred Barnes'  tragic life and death, how he has been almost written out of history and their own projects to bring him back into popular culture.

A blue plaque to Fred Barnes will be unveiled on 18th October 2021 at his ho...

Vesta Tilley was possibly the most famous male impersonator of all time and a huge star of the Victorian Music Hall.  The girl from Worcester, who was treading the boards from the age of 3 was also the wife of an MP and "Britain's best recruiting sergeant" during WW1.

In this episode Ann-Lindsey Wickens tells us what it's like to portray this iconic figure, and Vesta's history is told - in brief by...

"The Diary of a Nobody" has long been a favourite book of both Tim Shaw and Andy Smith.  They've seen it on stage, listened to it on the radio and, of course, read it.

So one rainy August day in Edinburgh after seeing Rodney Bewes in his on man version of 3 Men in a Boat and over a small sherry or two they hit upon the idea of adapting Charles Pooter's  diary into a one man play.  Andy reprised his role...