The Witch of Edmonton Director’s Note
Laura Wright adapted and directs our digital theatre production of The Witch of Edmonton. She teaches English Literature at University College, Oxford and previously co-directed The Duchess of Malfi for Creation in 2021.
Forc’d marriage, murder; murder, blood requires;
Reproach, revenge; revenge, hell’s help desires.
The Witch of Edmonton lays out its plot in a single opening couplet, promising forced marriage and murder, revenge and hell. What it does not mention is a witch. This absence, this lack of acknowledgement, lies at the heart of Creation’s new digital production, which weaves together accounts of other women executed as witches with the story of the overlooked and ostracised Elizabeth Sawyer.
Elizabeth Sawyer – the “witch” of Edmonton – was executed in 1621. The crimes of which she was accused ranged from cursing corn and cattle to calling upon the devil to kill a local woman, Anne Ratcliffe. Yet, even these heinous acts are not considered Sawyer’s original crime. Again and again, both in the pamphlet by the Reverend Henry Goodcole which gives his account of her trial, and in the play by Dekker, Ford, and Rowley which her story inspired, Sawyer is blamed for her ‘bad tongue’ (2.1.11), her swearing, and her cursing. In adapting this play, I raised the volume of women’s voices, cutting scenes to foreground not only Sawyer but also the other women of Edmonton: Winnifred, Susan, Kate, and Anne.
After all, Sawyer’s bad tongue is a bad tongue ‘by their bad usage made so’ (2.1.11): she has lived a life of harassment and exclusion with her words as her only weapon. In this adaption, we also hear “witches” recite the words written about them by others during their trials, speaking only in the third person as they read aloud the crimes of which they were accused.
On International Women’s Day, the day before our opening night, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon offered a posthumous apology to the more than 2500 Scots (most of them women) executed as witches. In performing The Witch of Edmonton four hundred years after it was first written, we remember the very real woman at the heart of its story: imperfect, complex, malicious, but, like so many women around her, shamed and silenced.
We also hear “witches” recite the words written about them by others during their trials.
This story is not a simple one – Sawyer, though persecuted, does turn to the murder and revenge that the opening couplet suggests – but it is in this moral uncertainty that its fascination lies. Is it true, as Sawyer claims, that ‘’Tis all one/To be a witch as to be counted one’ (2.1.133-34)?
As our own devil-dog says at the opening of the show, ‘See for yourself. Judge for yourself.’
The Witch of Edmonton runs from 5th – 20th March, performed live online. Tickets are £20 per device and you can join a live audience all over the world at 7:30pm GMT.
To see the show’s trailer head here
To Book Tickets pop over to the show page
To hear some other reasons it’s going to be great, try Lucy’s video