FREE WOMEN

WHy?

Because we need our own space, because there are too many men playing too loud, because we feel like it, because everything else is so demanding, because we want to break the rules, because we didn’t make the rules, because feminism can be improvised, because equality.

WHat?

Free Women are seven multi-disciplinary performers who create eclectic, thought-provoking & humorous experiences which examine the world through the female gaze. They have been seen at experimental performance night Free Range, Iklectik, Sadie Hennessy’s ‘Blessing of the Beasts’ and Smugglers Festival. They run workshops in improvisation and practice regularly together in their home city of Canterbury, Kent.

Free Women will present a panel discussion entitled ‘Writing, Devising, Scoring: Contagions & Collaborations’ at the 47th Comparative Drama Conference, July 9th-11th, 2025 in London, UK.

‘Lady, garden’

Through music, movement, satire, slapstick & film, ‘Lady, Garden’ explores the natural & unnatural habitats of the Lady Gardener in an immersive, improvised performance which takes its inspiration from the 'happenings' of the 1970s.

The film above shows excerpts from the first performance of Lady Garden at Free Range, Canterbury, 2023.

Film by Anna Braithwaite, live improvised soundtrack provided by Free Women when watched as part of a “Lady, Garden’ performance.

'A Women’s History of Happenings’

This semi-improvised musical performance explores what happens to Happenings when we pay attention to feminist history. Taking inspiration from the work of Yoko Ono and the Feminist Improvising Group, Free Women will involve you in their own Happening, referencing 20th Century works through a 21st Century lens.

WARNING: This show contains audience participation and feminist outrage.

Images: Thea Eaton-Baudains

WHO?

ANNA BRAITHWAITE

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Singer, improviser, filmmaker, planner, agitator.

Anna trained in Fashion and worked as a costume designer whilst studying opera by night. As a classical singer she has toured the UK with Carl Rosa Opera, sung at the Barbican and Opera Holland Park. Meanwhile her alter-ego, Scarlett, performed cabaret from village Hall tours across the UK to Bar Jeder Vernunft (Berlin) via The Dorchester Hotel and the National Theatre. She uses improvisation as a key part of her practice and regularly performs with Free Range Orchestra and Free Women as well as for composers Emily Peasgood and Rebecca Askew.

As a composer she has written for the Royal Opera House and had her work played on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM and Radiophrenia. Her practice has expanded to include immersive sound art and filmmaking whilst keeping at its core a desire to connect through music.

HELEDD FRANCIS-WRIGHT

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Flautist, improviser, conductor, teacher, shapeshifter.

Heledd Francis Wright is a flautist, composer and improviser whose work encompasses solo, chamber and orchestral appearances alongside television and radio broadcasts on Radio 3, Radio Wales, Channel 4,  BBC1 and ABC Classic FM.

Playing at festivals and venues across the UK and Western Europe, she has collaborated with composers, DJs, choreographers and sound artists, and in the world of improvisation and experimental music, she has performed at venues which include Café Oto, HCMF, Freedom of the City, and Free Range.

In her work as an educator, Heledd works with people of all ages and abilities, from beginner to Masters level and beyond. Her approach is primarily focused on supporting musicians to fulfil their ambitions while fostering an openness to new ideas and modalities.

KRISTIN FREDRIcKSSON

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Performer, maker, mother, somatic educator, polymath.

Dr Kristin Fredricksson is Associate Tutor in Movement at LAMDA and Artistic Director of wild culture creators, Beady Eye Theatre. She trained with Jacques Lecoq in the 90s. Her multimedia performance work has treated themes of climate and civilisational collapse, autobiography, trauma and memory. She has regularly received Arts Council funding, won Total Theatre and Arches Brick Awards and toured to venues and festivals such as the Barbican, La Nef (Paris), and Ruhrfestspiele (Germany). She wrote her PhD on self-image, puppetry and performance (Royal Holloway, 2018).

Nadia Tewfik bailey

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Violinist, improvisor, music therapist, magic.

Nadia is a music therapist and violinist with experience playing orchestral, chamber, folk, punk cabaret, small and large group free improvisation, one-to-one and group clinical improvisation.

celia young

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Organist, improviser, clown, costumier, quiet storm.

Celia’s practice blurs the lines between noisy costume making, clowning, ramshackle installation, and social commentary. With a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea and MA studies at The Margate School/ESADHaR, she weaves together absurdity, satire, cardboard, and zoomorphism to unravel the structures that govern our lives—work, the DWP, and the family.

Her practice is a glorious tangle of performance and video art, featuring nature-inspired creations, animal transformations, and a healthy dose of beach detritus. All materials are lo-fi, recycled, and full of past lives. A trained pianist, clarinettist, and recent organ scholar, she plays with sound as much as she does with fabric, movement, and mischief. By day, she works in the NHS, offering an insider’s eye on the psychology of labour, power, and bureaucracy.

Kat peddie

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Writer, performer, maverick, lecturer, hooden horse.

Dr Kat Peddie is a lecturer and director of the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Kent. Her poetry and academic writing is published internationally and her collaborative performances tend towards the local, often responding to locality in terms of place, local networks and folk traditions, with international resonance and reach through publication and recording.

She  is a poet, collagist, and, since starting to collaborate with other local performers from the inception of the adventurous performance charity Free Range in 2012, a sound artist, and writer and performer of experimental and street theatre and composed and semi-improvised music. She is an amateur fool, animal guiser and Hooden Horse doctor, obtaining her PhD in 2018. She works with Free Range Orchestra, Free Women, the contemporary mumming and hoodening troupe Trudegepig and runs Free Range Open Stage performance series. Kat is the founding and most prominent member of Kate’s Bush, a loose troupe of travelling players in the traditions of mumming, Peter Quince’s Rude Mechanicals and Poet’s Theatre. They do not discriminate between writer and actor, professional and amateur, cooking pan, prop or instrument: All are welcome in Kate’s Bush. 

maureen wolloshin

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Oboist, improviser, composer, researcher, boss.

Dr Maureen Wolloshin is an oboist, free improviser composer and feministing academic. Her work is experimental and always with others. This includes the commissioning of Henry Dagg to create a unique new instrument - the gliss anglais -  which extends her sonic scope.

She plays with Free Women, Noisy Women, London Improvisers Orchestra and Free Range Orchestra, duets with Stevie Wishart and Khabat Abas and has presented her research across Europe. She is published in Echo Journal.

Collaborators/supporters:

Free Range - LINK

Free Range Orchestra - LINK

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé - LINK

Maggie Nicols - LINK