A new ballad for Maria.

Listen to these new ballads inspired by the stories of survivors of domestic abuse, survivors who worked with Maria Marten writer Beth Flintoff to create new poetry and prose. We are releasing the first four tracks for International Womens Day on 8th March, and will be releasing further tracks as the show returns to Ipswich - the home of Eastern Angles and our story.

We have been touring the UK wih our production of The Ballad of Maria Marten. In developing the original production (then called Polstead) we worked with an incredible group of women who have all survived domestic abuse. Their insight helped the creative team, and especially Beth (our writer), understand Maria’s story, her journey. This year our writer Beth returned to work with two new group of women, one in Colchester with Next Chapter and one in Ipswich with Lighthouse.

The participants words reminded us that one of the reasons we know Maria’s story is through the folk song (The Suffolk Tragedy / The Murder of Maria Marten). That songs origins was as a Broadside Ballad – sold on street corners by Ballad sellers who would often fit the words to a tune they already knew or made up on the spot.

So we set six contemporary singer songwriters a Broadside Challenge. We gave them the words you can read here and asked them to set them to music, to create as if they were new broadside ballads

These beautiful, haunting and heartfelt tracks are the result of that challenge.