Anne Boleyn's Mother

Anne Boleyn's Mother comes to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre on Sunday 6 September. It's a one-woman play, which means the whole thing rests on a single performer on stage, and the title tells you exactly where the focus lies.

Most of us know the name Anne Boleyn, but we rarely hear about the woman who raised her. This play gives a voice to Elizabeth, Countess of Wiltshire, and puts her at the centre of the story. It's her perspective we follow, her words and her experiences taking the lead, rather than the usual focus on the queens and kings who usually dominate the history books. The play works by stepping back from the well-trodden ground of the Tudor court and looking at the family and the figures who operated just behind the scenes.

That Tudor history provides the backdrop for the whole thing. The play doesn't just stay within the family, though; it lets the wider political and social world of the era bleed through, so you get a sense of the times Elizabeth lived in as well as the woman herself. It's a piece that asks you to consider the life of a mother whose daughter became one of the most famous women in English history, and what that life looked like from the inside.

It's a one-woman show, so it's a relatively intimate night at the theatre. The performance takes place at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in York, with the show running on Sunday 6 September. If you've got a soft spot for the Tudors and want to see a different side of that family tree, this is a good place to start.