Warp and Weft
The Brutish Multitude Theatre Company
Thursday 21st -
Saturday 23rd March 2024
7:30pm evenings & Saturday matinee 2:30pm
Main Stage Production
Warp and Weft is a show of two one-act plays connected by theme and location: Waiting for Wesley and The House That Ethel Built
Waiting for Wesley is set in the Calder Valley in the summer of 1842 when a wave of strikes engulfs Lancashire and Yorkshire.
As well as demanding a reversal of wage cuts, many workers demand the government give way on the People's Charter and introduce universal male suffrage.
Thousands of troops confront strikers, killing five and wounding many more.
In one family, tensions mount as a husband and wife are torn between allegiance to the church and organising the rebellion.
The House That Ethel Built concerns the life and work of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886 – 1962). Ethel was the first working-class woman in Britain to publish a novel and is a rare example of a female working-class novelist. She was a former mill girl who also became a political activist producing possibly the world’s first anti-fascist newspaper, The Clear Light. The play dramatises the clash of her ideals with the political climate of the First World War and the constraints imposed by her marriage and her relationship with her publisher.
Both pieces are written and directed by Michael Crowley. The Brutish Multitude is a theatre company based in West Yorkshire.
