We produced ‘The Murderess’ in 2019 as part of our annual Gainsborough Literacy Project. The young people involved in the Literacy Project are not in full-time education, training or employment, or are struggling with mainstream education because of learning and/or behavioural difficulties and additional literacy needs.

This 70 min 3-hander was conceived from a short story written by Literacy Project participant C, aged 16. She used a period photograph as her stimulus and said of her experience, “I was really proud of my idea and how it became a play, and everyone got to see it. I like to be creative, but sometimes I find it hard, but it is good working with Shooting Fish.”

Synopsis

1895. In a prison cell, 72-year-old Margaret Van Woods awaits imminent execution for the mass murder of young women, conducted over a 40 year reign of terror. The night before her hanging, a ghost-writer visits, charged with the task of penning Margaret’s story; an unprecedented opportunity to unearth the truth behind the frenzied killings.
 
What were the motivations and methods? How did Margaret evade capture for so long? And why, most alarmingly, was every victim missing their heart?
 
“How many were there in the end?” the ghost-writer asks the murderess. But she never gets her answer . . .

For the total number has still to be settled.