The Woman Who Swallowed a Pin (The Woman Who...) is set in the East End in the inter-war years and also in 1999/2000. Established playwright and journalist Clare Bayley is commissioned as playwright to the project.
All Beth knew about her grandmother's mother was a little rhyme to explain her demise: "There was an old woman who swallowed a pin". But on her deathbed, her grandmother begins to talk for the first time about seven brothers and sisters which Beth never knew existed.
The Woman Who was presented in promenade form, the audience following Beth as she hunted down the facts, the half-truths and imagined fictions about Lally. The audience stumbled upon fragments of the histories of the eight lost siblings, and from them pieced together a speculative mosaic of the past, and an insight into Beth's present.
We researched the locality for material for the production, and also to find suitable venues for performance. The work looked to illuminate the local audience's sense of personal and environmental history. To that end we sought to install the production in a public building such as a town or church hall, pubs, hotels or a hospital; the aim being to blend the production as closely as possible into its locality. In this way, familiar and perhaps mundane landmarks would be transformed for the audience.