As part of THe Unraveling Fantasia of Miss H. I was invited to run a series of community workshops with women in Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax and Doncaster. These workshops created the women of banners, exhibited in each city at he projects Opera.

“It is 1837 and Mary, a Piano Mistress, has been arrested for a breach of the peace.  She is an educated, outspoken woman and the authorities of Doncaster are confounded. They commit Mary to a 41 year confinement in Wakefield Asylum.

The Unravelling Fantasia of Miss H. was a poetic portrayal of a Victorian woman imprisoned by a society intent on control. This new contemporary opera chronicles Mary Frances Heaton’s life-long struggle to hold on to her identity and find a way to tell her story to the outside world.

Mary’s tale is told through her own words, her defiant protests stitched into embroidered samplers and discovered in the asylum years later, now exhibited in Wakefield’s Mental Health Museum. Her powerful voice speaks across the years through a new composition by soprano Red Gray and experimental pianist Sarah Nicholls.”

The project was created by Stitched-Up Theatre.