These actresses from 1660 arrived in east London in the 21st century just out of Lockdown performing feminist rage “in bad taste” at a playhouse on the Isle of Dogs.

%image(14917827, type="article-full", alt="Sixteen Sixty at The Space... "Surreal being inside a theatre again after Lockdown." Picture: The Space")

They exist to create and take up space on stage, as it were, in a company they call Sixteen Sixty, taken from the year women were finally allowed to tread the boards as paid actresses.

Their self-penned drama In Bad Taste performed at The Space theatre in Westferry Road at the weekend was about people whose morals are consistently being tested.

“This was one of the funniest new plays we had received in a long time,” the theatre’s artistic director Adam Hemming recalled. “I was laughing out loud just reading the script. It is full of feminist rage that doesn’t let up.”

%image(14917828, type="article-full", alt="Artistic director Adam Hemming ... "One of the funniest new plays we received in a long time, feminist rage that doesn'’t let up." Picture: The Space")

The play depicted a woman who hates her boss and capitalism, but mostly capitalism—at least that’s what she tells her friends when she ropes them into creating her new utopia. The group is fuelled by an onslaught of sexism, homophobia and unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a woman. So they go about chewing the fat of people who have done them wrong to spark “some sort of cannibalism-meets-feminism revolution”.

This company of players, in reality, live together and got caught up in the Coronavirus lockdown which brought even them closer.

They said in one voice: “It was hard being stuck inside so long and we struggled at not being able to go out. It was surreal to be inside a theatre again.”

Sixteen Sixty was nominated for a theatre company sponsorship in Space’s #SaveOurTheatres crowdfunding campaign led by Sir Ian McKellen.

The theatre raised £15,000 for an online workshop course for 10 actors, seven playwrights, six directors, three theatre companies, two theatre practitioners, two residencies and a producer.