Hannah Snell was a real woman, who disguised and lived as man for five years. She joined the infantry in 1745 to fight Bonny Prince Charlie and his Jacobites. Three years later, she joined the marines, sailed to India and fought the French and their Indian sepoys. When she returned, a theatre near St Pancras (entrance fee – a pint of red wine) employed her to sing solos and perform the Manual Exercise – movements with a musket that an infantry soldier had to do perfectly. Hannah did it to acclaim. We don’t know what she was paid, only that she worked every night of the summer of 1750, and that she and her story, dictated to and published with help from a journalist, were the talk of the town. When the theatre closed in the autumn, she toured her act to Bath and Bristol.

This solo show written, performed and directed by Georgina Lock tells the incredible story of Hannah Snell, female soldier 1750