A group of women are assembled in the OvalHouse Theatre on a rainy evening in London to discuss a new theatre production, provisionally called SeaTown Ladies. We begin with a performance from poet Meg Beech, who pours out an internal-rhyme-laden polemic on the birth of a baby girl: “Minute old miniature goddess,” who “will spend life struggling / in debris of sanctified sexuality”. There’s a burst of whooping applause, and then Anne Langford of Likely Story Theatre Company stands up to tell us about the inspiration for the play. She had been on a walk, she said, in Wales, which ended at a pub. The pub had a picture on the wall of a group of women sailors from the early 20th century. They stood face on, chests thrown out, and heads up; legs firm and arms straight down by their sides, in skirts and gumboots. “They looked so bold and full of life,” Anne said. “Like people I wanted to know.” She went to have a closer look and saw that the photo carried a tagline: “Rude and Coarse Women”.
Anne was intrigued by the disparity between what she saw when she looked at this picture – and what the caption writer had seen. Since she is a dramatist, she decided to explore this disparity by creating a play about women in a boat. And when she hit Google for inspiration, she came across Exxpedition, an all-female crew who will be sailing from Lanzarote to Martinique this November, to raise awareness of the plastics and toxicants in the oceans, and how this may be contributing to a rise in cancer rates among young women. Anne invited Dr Lucy Gilliam, co-founder of Exxpedition, along to speak to us and get our thoughts channelled in the right direction.
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