Louise Jordan

“Life to me has been a great adventure.”

From a remote hilltop farm in the Derbyshire moorlands to Manchester city magistrate. The Hard way is the story of Hannah Mitchell, and the latest one-woman show of storytelling with song by acclaimed musician and composer Louise Jordan.

With two weeks’ formal schooling behind her and through her sheer force of character, Hannah escapes domestic drudgery to become a campaigner, speaker, writer, suffragette, councillor and finally a magistrate.

A self-taught, self-made woman, Hannah leaves home aged 14 years, exchanging one exploitative situation for another. In 1906 she finds herself face-to-face with Winston Churchill as a public meeting and spends time in Strangeways prison. The show celebrates one woman’s determination to take power in the face of insurmountable barriers, motivated by a desire to improve life for those around her.

“The work we began, the cause we sponsored, the faith we held will all remain to be carried on, we hope, by abler hands than ours.”