2TimeTheatre: New Projects 2020

Lewd Women and Female Felons and The Fasting Girl selected to be part of Make it SO season at NST

Two plays by mother and daughter playwrights, Cecily and Rachel O’Neill, will be presented as part of this year’s Make It SO season, a festival designed to support emerging writers and artists from Southampton and the surrounding areas. Cecily and Rachel co-founded 2TimeTheatre in 2016 and quickly built a reputation for bringing original and historical stories to dramatic life.

Lewd Women and Female Felons is a play for voices, based on research done on the lives of many unfortunate women who were sentenced to 12 months hard labour as punishment for having illegitimate babies. Enlivened by songs and ballads of the period, the play offers a glimpse of the lives of the women who suffered such harsh conditions.

The Fasting Girl is an original drama that looks at the sacrifice one woman is prepared to make, whatever the cost to herself. Building on the tradition of hunger striking as a means of peaceful protest, this three-hander draws on legend, folklore, religion and the supernatural to create a tense and ambiguous drama.

Cecily and Rachel said: ‘This is the first time we’ve had our work presented at the same time in the same place. A first for us professionally and possibly for any mother-daughter playwrights!’.
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Cecily’s previous project was A Fruitful Season: Keats in Winchester was staged in July as part of the Winchester Festival, and Rachel’s most recent play, Tilly and the Spitfires, was staged as part of last year’s Make It SO and went on to have a full production as part of Winchester Heritage Open Days.

2TimeTheatre: New projects 2020 will present both plays as script-in-hand productions on the same night at Nuffield Theatres Southampton City Space.

Performances 17th and 18th February, 6.30 pm and 8.00 pm. Tickets are £5 for each show and available from the box office on 023 8067 1771 or online.
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Please contact Rachel O’Neill for more information on [email protected] and 07821 87904.