A film which looks at the life of Sophia Duleep Singh, the daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh empire, Maharaja Duleep Singh. The film/theatre piece follows on from a podcast of the piece Sophia for the Forgotten Women of History series in 2018 to commemorate some women receiving the right to vote.
Beverly Andrews is an actor, director, playwright, and documentary director. She appeared in the BBC sketch show Little Miss Jocelyn. Beverly is a recipient of a scholarship to this year’s Sundance Collab for film directors. She was also the recipient as a playwright of the 2017 Roland Rees Award Bursary, given by the Alfred Fagon award as well as having received six research and development awards from the Arts Council of England. In 2021 she produced and wrote the film/theatre hybrid Sophia which looks at the life of Asian suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh. Shot during the UK’s lockdown on the empty stage of the Arcola Theatre, Sophia is now in contention for the 2022 Raindance Film Festival.
The play version of Sophia was produced in Bhutan as part of the celebration of Bhutan’s Thimpu College ten-year anniversary.
The film is directed by Abigail Pickard Price, an award-nominated director based in London and Associate Director (New Work and Artist Development) of The Watermill Theatre. She was nominated for Best Director and Best Ensemble at the Off West End Awards in 2018 for Burke and Hare and Best Director in 2014 for Anna Weiss. Her one-woman production of Shrew was nominated for Best New Play and Best Production at the Buxton Fringe Awards and Ami Jones won Best Actress for her performance. She also works as a script reader and youth theatre leader.