The Popess - forgotten history told at The Glitch

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Photo by Josephine Bono_New York

There's something gloriously intimate about The Glitch – its brick-lined, slightly damp basement venue feels like a confession booth, or dare I say, a secret chamber where history comes alive. So it’s the perfect lair in which to encounter The Popess: Instructions for Freedom, a singularly splendid one-woman show that sweeps you from the 13th-century backstreets of Milan into the heart of theological subversion. Elena Mazzon (who also penned and performs the piece) becomes Everywoman — but not just any everywoman. She is challenging the misogyny, the doctrine and hypocrisy of Catholicism, exploring other beliefs (the flagellators were not for her). She plays multiple parts, with the slightest of costume alterations.

Let’s begin in Milan. In the 1200s, the Guglielmites—a bold, quietly defiant religious community—spoke of a woman, Guglielma, as the personification of the Holy Spirit, claimant to a “Third Testament.” On her deathbed she appointed her sharp-witted companion, Maifreda da Piovano, as the Popess, a move that upended everything patriarchy held sacred. Come 1300—Jubilee Year—the Inquisition clocked, and things turned ugly: bones exhumed and burned, her followers persecuted, voices extinguished.

But oh, Elena Mazzon doesn’t let history lie still. Her Everywoman is full of modern language, sparky humour—you’re not only following a forgotten historical footnote; you're snorting at her anachronistic quips, giggling at her slang-peppered asides, and then caught off-guard when she morphs into the inquisitor, robes swapped on with cheeky flair. She even shares impressions of that teenage friend with an "avuncular" warmth that keeps the tension fun and live.

The Glitch, that atmospheric crypt-of-a-venue, seems tailor-made for an inquisition—cold walls, an aura of history, an almost-guilty hush when she asks, almost pleading, “What does faith bring you?” or more piercingly, “What would you die for?” And—brave souls, do speak up—it’s not just performance. The audience becomes complicit, pressed into hymn-singing (not my favourite thing—I can’t carry a tune, but plenty there luckily could), and then being designated as heretics, or stung for a fine by the Inquisitor.

All this unfolds in just sixty minutes—sharp, playful, and potent. No wasted moments. You leave buzzing, questioning belief, patriarchy, and the stories we tell ourselves. And, of course, laughing at the absurdity of toilets being “gender-neutral… just a bucket at the back.”

At an hour long, it feels exactly the right length, witty and challenging in equal measure. A little hymn-singing aside (which tested my off-key vocals), this is a captivating, thought-provoking and surprisingly fun dive into faith, feminism, and forgotten history.

Listing InfoTitle: The Popess: Instructions for Freedom

Venue: The Glitch, Lower Marsh, London, SE1 7AE

Dates: Wednesday 3 September – Monday 8 September 2025

Times: 7 pm (with a 2 pm matinee on Saturday 6 September)

Running Time: Approx. 60 minutes — quite perfect, really.

If you’re eager to witness this fiery, wry, intimate collision of history and modernity, you can book your tickets here: