Blue Stockings

The fifth Saddleworth Players play of 25/26 season is Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale , directed by Sue Borg.

Blue Stockings is a moving, comical and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women’s suffrage.

1896. Girton College, Cambridge, the first college in Britain to admit women. The Girton girls study ferociously and match their male peers grade for grade. Yet, when the men graduate, the women leave with nothing but the stigma of being a ‘blue stocking’ – an unnatural, educated woman. They are denied degrees and go home unqualified and unmarriageable.

In Jessica Swale’s debut play, Blue Stockings, Tess Moffat and her fellow first years are determined to win the right to graduate. But little do they anticipate the hurdles in their way: the distractions of love, the cruelty of the class divide or the strength of the opposition, who will do anything to stop them. The play follows them over one tumultuous academic year, in their fight to change the future of education.

13-20th June 2026

You may also like the following events from Millgate Arts Centre:

• Next month, 27th September, 07:30 pm, Waiting for God in Oldham
• This November, 15th November, 07:30 pm, Nell Gwynn in Oldham
• Happening on, 7th February, 07:30 pm, Once Upon a Time in Wigan in Oldham

Also check out other Workshops in Oldham.