Award-winning, North-Tyneside-based, woman-led theatre company full of proper little Workie Tickets.
Geordie Gaol Girls: October 2025
Marking 100 years since Newcastle Gaol’s closure, join us as we unearth the stories of working-class women and girls locked up there – in the very place it all happened.
This is reclamation.
This is rage.
This is the truth the textbooks left out.
About the play
From 1828 to 1925, Newcastle Gaol’s iron gates held thousands of women and girls – many locked up for crimes born out of poverty, protest, or simply refusing to “know their place.”
Geordie Gaol Girls is a heritage project and play that reclaims their voices.
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Newcastle Gaol’s closure, this once-in-a-century event is guided by local research and co-created with groups of women and girls to ensure the stories left there aren’t lost.
With our signature blend of raw storytelling, activism, and Geordie heart, these are the untold tales of resilience, resistance, and radical sisterhood.
Part truth, part imagined – because so much has been lost – this immersive performance brings together research, stories, and lived experience to fill the silences.
The cast.
With so much women’s history erased or gatekept, we pieced our Geordie Gaol Girls stories back together with our local community. The characters you’ll meet were shaped in workshops with young women from John Spence High School and local women’s groups, mixing historical fragments with lived experience.
Charlotte Ryder
as Lizzie Spence
Award-winning actor, voice artist, director, and writer, you may have seen wor Charlotte in ITV's Vera, CBBC’s The Dumping Ground, or Northern Stage's The War of the Worlds. A longtime Workie Ticket collaborator, Charlotte returns to channel the raw fury and survival instinct of Lizzie Spence – a character created by girls from John Spence Community High School. Locked up for protecting her sister, this is a young woman aching for safety, belonging, and love.
Christina Berriman Dawson
as Kitty Marion, Jane Jamieson, and The Matron
North East Writer of the Year and total powerhouse, Christina’s credits span the RSC, National Theatre, and ITV’s The Hunt for Raoul Moat. She’ll be embodying the charisma, fire, and radical truth of militant suffragette Kitty Marion, who served time in Newcastle Gaol, in addition to Jane Jamieson – the last woman to be hanged in Newcastle – and the chilling Matron.
Meena Al-Nawrasy
as Hilda Collins and Lady Constance Lytton
A proud Geordie of Kurdish heritage, Meena Al-Nawrasy graduated at Newcastle Theatre Royal’s Project A and has performed across the region in shows at Alphabetti, Live Theatre, and Gala Durham. As Hilda Collins – a neurodivergent character created by Women’s Workshop – she finds refuge in rhythm, song, and fantasy. Meena will also be playing fearless British suffragette Lady Constance Lytton.
Jacqueline Phillips
as Betty Green
A professional actor for more than 35 years, Peterlee-born Jacqueline Phillips brings depth to every performance. Having trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, she’s worked across stage, screen, radio, and community projects – and she’s back with Workie Ticket to embody Betty Green, our gaol girl created with FREE (Female Recovery through Experience & Empowerment) group. Born behind bars, she uses humour to mask pain – until solidarity cracks her armour.
The artistic team.
Tracy Gillman
Director
Tracy Gillman is an actor, writer, and director with a PhD in performance from Newcastle University. She’s worked across theatre, film, and TV, and regularly collaborates with Live Theatre, Northern Stage, and Theatre Royal. Known for her bold, honest work in both traditional and non-traditional spaces, she brings fierce focus and deep care to Geordie Gaol Girls.
JoJo Kirtley
Writer
JoJo Kirtley is the founder of Workie Ticket Theatre and a 2024 Churchill Fellow researching how theatre tackles gender-based violence. A writer, producer, and Mam of three, her work is rooted in lived experience and radical community work. With Geordie Gaol Girls, she has co-created the play with groups of women and girls to bring untold HERstories to life – loud, local, and unapologetically feminist.
Viv Wiggins
Assistant producer
North-east-based actor, presenter, and producer, Viv's character work sees her shift between the living, dead, and everything in between – from feminist theatre to murder mysteries. Viv’s been with us since 2019 and worn many hats: stage manager, actor, assistant director, and producer. For Geordie Gaol Girls, Viv co-developed characters with groups of women and girls in Amble, Durham, and online.
Ashlea Sanderson
Education lead & script support
First-class actor, producer, and qualified drama teacher with more than 20 years’ experience, Ashlea Sanderson has been part of Workie Ticket since 2019. For Geordie Gaol Girls, Ashlea led workshops with Year 8 and 9 girls at John Spence High School to co-create the character of Lizzie Spence, blending professional craft with lived experience to amplify girl’s ideas and voices.
Jade Young
Stage manager and technician
Born and bred in Howdon, Jade Young’s our powerhouse behind the scenes. After cutting her teeth as technical supervisor at Laurels in Whitley Bay, she’s recently wrangled chaos and cue sheets as stage manager for Gerry & Sewell at Newcastle Theatre Royal, and worked as part of the production team for Public Record with the National Theatre in Sunderland. For Geordie Gaol Girls, Jade’s the one keeping us on track, on time, and just the right side of rebellion.
Chloe Meadows
Deputy stage manager
From Peter Pan and Cinderella at the Whitley Bay Playhouse to a summer of Shakespeare with Theatre Space North East CIC, Chloe Meadows’ experience spans from amateur theatre to national tours. For Geordie Gaol Girls, Chloe keeps our play running like clockwork, calling the shots (and the cues) to make sure every Gaol Girl is seen and heard.
Barbara Romanis-Watson & Craft-A-Rella)
Set and costume design
From stark prison greys to bold suffragette sashes, Barbara Romanis-Watson (pattern instructor at the School of Design, Northumbria University with more than 20 years’ experience) and the talented lasses at Craft-A-Rella bring the visual world of Geordie Gaol Girls to life.
Nina Cresswell
Head of communications
Writer, storyteller, campaigner, and messaging strategist, Nina Cresswell uses her 12+ years’ creative comms expertise to ensure the stories of our women and girls reach those who need to hear them most. After winning a precedent-setting legal case in 2023 to help protect those with lived experience of injustice speaking out, she remains dedicated to amplifying voices too often left out of the story.
Directed by Tracy Gillman and written by JoJo Kirtley, this living, breathing archive honours their stories. Guided by historical research, it's brought to life with women and girls from across the region, including:
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Students from John Spence Community High School
Our groups of lasses contributed to the archive in all kinds of ways:
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Crafting characters
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Making costumes and artwork
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Producing soundscapes and poems
The Archive of Forgotten Women
Welcome to the Workie Ticket office. This is the Archive – part physical, part metaphor – a haunted bureaucratic space where stories sit trapped. A dusty, locked room stuffed with files of women’s lives deliberately left to rot.
Even though Newcastle Gaol closed in 1925, the Archive of Forgotten Women will ensure the voices of those confined there aren't lost.
By shedding light on untold stories of injustice – poverty, and gender-based violence – we aim to inspire future acts of remembrance, resistance, and care.
We remember what they fought for, what they endured, and what we’re still fighting for today.
Let us introduce you to the real-life revolutionaries and working-class women in the Archive already...
Kitty Marion
Suffragette, music-hall star, and serial arsonist
“I am more than ever convinced of the necessity for militant action”
Long before #MeToo, Kitty Marion was fighting for women’s rights – inside the theatre industry, and outside it. She joined the suffragette movement after enduring routine sexual harassment as a performer, and went on to mastermind an arson campaign across the UK.
In Newcastle Gaol, she lit her bedding on fire, went on hunger strike, and was force-fed – brutally and repeatedly. She later exposed the practice in public letters.
Lady Constance Lytton
Suffragette and aristocrat
Convicted of “disorderly behaviour with intent to disturb peace” for throwing a stone at Chancellor Lloyd George’s car during a visit to Newcastle in 1909, Lady Constance Lytton insisted on not using her privilege to avoid prison. She deliberately proclaimed her guilt, hoping to be punished like any other woman.
But because of her rank, our Lady was treated gently, never force-fed, and released early. To expose the system, she rejected her privileged status to disguise herself as a working-class woman and was immediately subjected to the violence her poorer sisters knew all too well.
Jane Jamieson
The last woman hanged in Newcastle
In 1829, Jane Jamieson was convicted of killing her mother during a drunken quarrel in their Newcastle home. The pair lived in deep poverty, and both drank heavily – a harsh reality for many working-class families. Accounts suggest sudden escalation in the heat of an argument, but the law of the day was unforgiving towards poor women.
Jane’s trial was swift (lasting only one day), her defence minimal, and she was sentenced to the gallows. She was executed outside the Westgate – the last woman ever to be hanged in Newcastle – then dissected on public view at the Surgeons’ Hall.
The ones history tried to forget
As Lady Constance Lytton made clear: working-class women didn’t only face the inhumanities of Newcastle jail. They faced erasure.
They were locked away for striking back at abusive husbands, for petty theft to feed their bairns, or for simply not knowing their place.
Meet wor Lizzie, Betty, Hilda, and the rest of the forgotten lasses – locked up alongside suffragettes for no other crime than being born poor and female.
What's really changed for women in the last 100 years?
The world our Geordie Gaol Girls were forced to endure was different to ours.
But as these suffragettes and survivors look back at us, they remind us: while patriarchy’s tactics differ, our challenges remain the same.
Around the world, women and girls are being forced into marriage, subjected to FGM, and murdered in their homes and on the streets.
Women – especially Black women – are still criminalised for poverty, and sexual violence continues to be used as a weapon of war. We’re still marching, protesting to Reclaim the Night, holding vigils for women murdered by the very people meant to protect us.
And now, for the first time in history, repeated studies are suggesting that the most misogynistic, outdated, and regressive attitudes towards women and girls are the most common among the youngest male generations.
While women are no longer being marched through Pilgrim Street in irons with a jeering crowd at their heels, they’re facing new threats: in the form of online influencers fueling misogyny, with algorithms promoting increasingly extreme content.
Rise up with the Geordie Gaol Girls
This is your invitation.
To hear the voices.
To honour the rage.
To be part of the sisterhood.
This production was made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with additional support from Recovery College Collective, whose office space now stands on the historic prison site.
