Amateur production of Jessica Swale's play about four women fighting for the right to graduate from Girton College, Cambridge.
Preston Drama Club are bringing Blue Stockings to the Preston Playhouse from 14 to 17 April 2027. It's an amateur production of Jessica Swale's debut play, directed by Rachael Fraser-Bourne and Jackie Rhodes.
The story is set in 1896 at Girton College, Cambridge — the first college in Britain to admit women. It follows first-year student Tess Moffat and her peers as they fight for the right to graduate. When the men receive their degrees, the women are left with the stigma of being a 'blue stocking' — an unnatural, educated woman — and are denied degrees, leaving them unqualified and unmarriageable. It's described as a moving, comical and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the backdrop of women's suffrage.
It's a play that looks at a specific, often overlooked corner of history: the gap between being taught and being recognised for it. The title itself comes from that old insult for an educated woman, and the whole thing centres on the frustration of doing the work but being denied the qualification. It's a story about education and self-determination, set in a time when the simple act of getting a degree was a political battle.
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Blue Stockings runs from 14 to 17 April, with each performance starting at 19:30 and finishing around 22:00. Tickets start from £12.
