top of page

Raising the Wreck -Revisited!

1000244481.jpg

5-7th November 2026- The Empty Space, Media City:  https://www.ticketsource.com/sea-change-theatre-company

12th November 2026- Unity Theatre, Liverpool: https://unitytheatreliverpool.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173691887

21st and 22nd November 2026- Theatre Porto, Ellesmere Port: ticket link coming soon!

Thanks for submitting!

“I remember Raising the Wreck as a ground-breaking drama bringing lesbian lives to the fore. It’s fitting that it should be reintroduced to a new audience forty years after it was first produced.” Bernardine Evaristo- writer, author, original cast member, and the first black woman to win The Booker Prize

Raising the Wreck- Revisited!
5-7th November 2026 at The Empty Space, Media City
12th November 2026 at Unity Theatre, Liverpool
21st and 22nd November 2026 at Theatre Porto, Ellesmere Port
 Ticket link on events page!
 

Coming in November 2026!

Temporary poster by HC(1)(2)_edited_edit
Donate to our Crowd Funder!

Written by

Sue Frumin

How it all began..

 

In 1985, Gay Sweatshop https://unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/gay-sweatshop/?pid=1291 commissioned Sue Frumin to write Raising the Wreck. https://unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/gay-sweatshop/raising-the-wreck/ The original version of the play is set in a sunken galleon where four long dead women seafarers tell a modern woman about their experience. The performers were all female, and for the first time in the company's history the play had a multi-racial cast and characters. Here four long dead women seafarers tell a modern woman about their experience.

In 2017, extracts of this popular play were performed at The Arcola Theatre with The Arcola Queer Collective, and in 2023 the full play was resurrected by Paul Green for Bijou Stories (https://bijouhistory.com/2023/08/03/raising-the-wreck/) and a rehearsed reading was produced by Susan Croft for Unfinished Histories (www.unfinishedhistories.com) at Newington Green Meeting House.
'In the heart of a sunken pirate ship, where four fierce female pirates, long since dead, recount their stories to a woman who has fallen into a timeslip from 1980s London, where she is one of the women running a pirate radio station. Originally commissioned from Sue Frumin in 1985 by Gay Sweatshop's women's company for the first time in the company’s history the play had a multi-racial cast. Moving, funny and insightful, the piece is based on the true stories of legendary women pirates including Grace O'Malley, Mary Read and Ching Pan Twu.''
Cast and Crew: "Directed by Runa Augdal with Charly Faye, Blair Heinz, Catherine Mieses, Cicely Halkes-Wellstead, Elise Xiaqi and Emma Louise-Price.

Audience members said: ‘'The actresses were so good… Not only did they create such compelling characters but they had a great chemistry and a fast banter. The play was sparking with jokes and the ensemble got the timing exactly right for the audience to laugh.'’

​

The original 1985 Gay Sweatshop cast and crew:

Writer: Sue Frumin

Director: Paddi Taylor
Cast: Bernadine Evaristo, Hazel Maycock, Sara Ridd, Denise Thompson, Marjolein de Vries
Designer: Kate Owen

We do not consent to our work, performances, voices and likeness being recorded, used and reproduced for the purposes of digitisation, synthetisation or performance cloning with digital technologies, machine learning systems or equivalent means present and future.

designed by HKC

bottom of page