Whilst the company explored old murder ballads for BURY THE HATCHET the inspiration usually comes from folk adaptations of the late nineties and noughties, the stuff of Sasha’s adolescence. “I’ve always been very interested in folk music” says Sasha. “My dad’s family is Irish, and I listened to a load of Irish folk music”. She also used to buy CDs of world music, Muddy Waters, Bluegrass “that type of thing” and all of that fermented into her musical tastes.

The work of the company also brings women centre stage, so it seems apt to ask Sasha about her thoughts on feminism. “Ultimately feminism is about creating a space in which female voices can really sing” she explains. “There’s no putting them in a box, no putting the mute on them, they are just allowed to express their own truth in a way that is meaningful.” There is much to explore that Sasha has not lived through herself, but she uses her own experience to connect with others so that she can “see what we’ve got to share.” “It’s just about sharing your truth and making space for other people to have their space, so everyone’s voice has equal value in the room.”

Clearly there is also a strong feminist angle in LOUISA & JO (& ME), but Sasha insists that while she is remaining true to Louisa’s personal history as a woman, she is also dealing with those things that make us all human. “I’m a middle-class white female from Boston” Sasha admits “but the show is about what’s human and true about all of us; about growing up and how families are messed up, and how we learn to love our ‘messed up’”.

Louisa’s real life differs from the one portrayed in the book so it’s not a straight forward story. While Sasha is struggling with the historical facts of Louisa’s life, she also needs to structure a play “so that it’s satisfying”.  “How do I remain true to Louisa and to what happened? How do I make it emotionally true if it can’t be true?” The example Sasha gives is that in real life Louisa’s sister portrayed as Beth did not see Meg get married because she had already died before the wedding took place, but in the book she does.  Sasha offers a quote from Louisa:

‘I had a sad life, so I wrote jolly tales.’

“If it’s wish fulfilment, is it so wrong?” questions Sasha.  Before Louisa skyrocketed to fame with LITTLE WOMEN, she wrote under the pseudonym 'AM Barnard' writing gothic thrillers filled with all things scandalous and unladylike.

“I don’t want to do her dirty, but I don’t love them all” admits Sasha. “Some are very much to my taste, a long love chase, very fun, very swashbuckling but what it does in far ranging adventure it lacks in interiority.” It was not what the world wanted, and Louisa’s publisher asked her to ‘write a girl’s novel’ instead, and that gave Louisa licence to go into the personal struggles of all of her family, focusing in on the home, on Orchard House and her own sister’s lives.

This thought is what led Sasha to the realisation about her reluctance to talk about her own life. “Why would anyone care about my history?” she questions “but then I realised it’s important because if these things have affected you, they have also affected other people.” It makes her wonder if it isn’t social conditioning that devalues home spun stories.  “They don’t have as much pith and moment as a tale from the high seas, but they are about real experiences.”

Sasha has found that researching Louisa’s life has led to some interesting discoveries. “She (Louisa) is sort of reaching through the pages to me 150 years later which is a very interesting and illuminating experience; having a great artist as confidante, she’s sort of encouraging me along” says Sasha.  One of the things that has impressed her is that Louisa served as a nurse during the Civil War. “But in the book, it is her father who gets sent” says Sasha. Not every detail will make it to the show as it might not fit with the narrative, but it does inform the show.  Knowing that Louisa helped young men in the wards and is sitting by their bedside as they pass means that she appreciates why Jo has such “crotchety plucky vibes” in the novel, a kind of “I’m not letting anyone walk all over me” attitude.

There have been many films and television adaptations of Little Women. Sasha suggests that “when you see a particular adaptation loads and loads it’ll always be your favourite”. Although she loves the first Little Women ‘talkie’, starring Katherine Hepburn she grew up with the 1994 Gillian Anderson adaptation with Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst.  She believes that every adaptation is great because they are all giving Jo agency in her own life but in this adaptation, Jo winds up with Professor Bhaer rather than Laurie. “He is this fatherly figure who can guide and show Jo how to grow and be bigger than she already is, whereas Laurie is all charm and fun and playing but doesn’t encourage her to be her greater self.” This has led to an exploration of ‘dad themes’ in the play. “Not having a handsome feature in his face but kind eyes” quotes Sasha. “It’s important that Professor Bhaer is not a young 30-year-old heart throb. I would take Gabriel burn in a tweed jacket any day of the week,” she adds with a grin. If anyone would like to know what Sasha’s partner might think to that remark, she has a comeback: “He wears a lot of tweed.”

Sasha is really looking forward to sharing the show with an audience. “It’s the magic of storytelling where you get to be in the same room as an audience: for 90 mins we’re going to be back in New England”. For someone who has not been able to get home for a while and who will be filming the show so that her Grandparents get to see it she’s really excited to share some “things with people who haven’t been able to get home either.”