Raising The Wreck: Revisited

Raising The Wreck: Revisited comes to Unity Theatre on Thursday 12 November, a new generation reimagining of Sue Frumin's pioneering queer theatre piece. It's directed by Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder, with set and costume design by Lara Booth.

To get where this version starts, you have to look back at the original. It was commissioned by Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company and is cited as one of the first British plays to feature a multi-racial cast of women and to put lesbian stories at its centre. The story follows four women pirates — Grace O'Malley, Aku, Mary Read and Zoa — who have been lying on a wreck at the bottom of the sea for centuries, drifting through time until they're visited by Jenny, whose stories carry them into the 1980s. In this new version, Jenny falls through time again to 2026, landing on their long-forgotten shipwreck armed only with a mobile phone.

Two big names in British writing have spoken on the original production. TS Eliot Prize winner Joelle Taylor called it 'a pioneering piece of unapologetically women's theatre, loud, vibrant, hilarious and somehow holy', and Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, who appeared in the original cast, remembered it as 'a ground-breaking drama, bringing lesbian lives to the fore'. This new staging brings that same story back for a different generation, with the 1980s connection now extended into our own time.

It runs on Thursday 12 November at 7:30pm at Unity Theatre, with tickets at £15 and £10.