In 16th century Essex, hundreds of women were accused, condemned and executed for witchcraft. Three Wise Women resurrects the true stories of three of them: Agnes Waterhouse, Ursula Kemp and Elsa.
Through ritual, movement and spoken word, these women rise from history’s gallows to reclaim their names, their stories and their power. Their lives intertwine through evocative physical theatre and embodied storytelling, revealing three ordinary women shaped by extraordinary circumstances: a healer, a midwife, a barmaid. Women whose knowledge of the land, of birth, of illness and of survival was once essential to their communities, before it became feared.
Not condemned for evil, but for existing beyond control.
At its heart, Three Wise Women is a fierce feminist act of remembrance. Exploring sisterhood as resistance, community as protection and wisdom as inheritance, the work confronts the systems that criminalised female autonomy and silenced generations of women.
This is a story of persecution, survival and reclamation. Of women scapegoated in times of fear and social unrest. Of voices that refuse to be buried and legacies that refuse to burn.
In honouring Agnes, Ursula and Elsa, we honour the countless unnamed women whose wisdom was branded as witchcraft.
Three women. Three stories. One unbreakable voice.