One-woman show charts journey of brave Wrong ’Un

Written by ex-Chumbawamba guitarist Boff Whalley, Wrong ’Un is a pared down one-woman show about the suffrage movement.

“The last thing I did with Red Ladder was Big Society! with Phil Jupitus – it got really big, it had a long run and lots of people were involved,” says Whalley. “I was talking to Rod Dixon, artistic director of Red Ladder, about how you might downsize and make a really small show. I thought it would be interesting to do a musical with just one person, without backing, keeping it simple so you could do it in the corner of a library or other small venues.”

At around the same time that Whalley was considering this, a friend of his came across a suitcase belonging to her grandmother which revealed that she had been a militant suffragette.

“In the case there were press cuttings, photograph albums, letters from Emmeline Pankhurst and a medal awarded to women who had been imprisoned and force-fed in Holloway,” says Whalley. “My friend didn’t really know the story of her grandmother and I thought ‘we know about the main figures in the suffragette movement but we don’t know the stories of the thousands of ordinary women who were involved’ and I thought that this would be an opportunity to tell one of them.”

While developing the idea further Whalley, who is originally from Lancashire, decided to set it in an area he was familiar with. “I knew that there were a lot of Northern mill working women,” he says. “They were known, rather derogatively, as ‘the clogs and shawl brigade’. They gave up everything to be involved in the suffrage campaign.” And so the character of Annie Wilde, a Lancashire mill girl, was born. Wrong ’Un follows her journey from schoolroom to prison cell and beyond as she is galvanised into action by a sense of injustice.

Whalley spent eight months researching, reading everything he could about the suffragettes, and was surprised by some of what he learnt. “When I sit down to write something historical or political, I often end up writing something I didn’t expect to write. We think we know about the suffragettes but I found out so much I didn’t know. For example, we have the idea that women were given the vote at the end of the First World War, but that was only a few women – it wasn’t until 1928 that all women got the vote.”

Ella Harris is playing the part of Annie, and Whalley says he had her in mind when he was writing the piece after seeing her in a play around six years ago. “I thought she would be great doing a one-woman play,” he says. “There are certain actors who when they start talking to you on stage you feel empathy with them. She has a great way of telling a story.”

The production opens this weekend at Leeds Central Library as part of the Big Bookend festival and will then go on tour; venues will include schools, working men’s clubs and even a union conference. “It’s great to do theatre in front of people who don’t necessarily go to the theatre and for it to prompt people to find out more.”

Wrong ’Un. Leeds Library, Sun, www.bigbookend.co.uk Hebden Bridge Festival, June 24, www.hebdenbridgeartsfestival.co.uk