By Helen Arney, Brian Mackenwells and Jenni Pinnock, developed with support from Birmingham Hippodrome and Lincoln Arts Centre’s Innovate Artist scheme.

In 1880s Girton College, Cambridge, five brilliant young women arrive to study in a university that refuses to fully recognise them. Led by physicist and inventor Hertha Marks-Ayrton, alongside mathematician Charlotte Scott, astronomer Annie Russell Maunder, chemist Ida Freund, and botanist Ethel Sargant, they are determined to claim an education — even without the promise of a degree.

When fire threatens the college, Hertha can no longer stay hidden behind her textbooks. Against all expectations, she brings her friends together to form the first all-women Fire Brigade. What begins as an act of protection becomes an act of defiance, challenging the rules designed to keep them quiet, grateful, and out of the way.

As they fight fires across Girton, the women realise they are part of a much larger struggle: for the right to study, to work as scientists, and to imagine a future that includes them.

Inspired by a true story, The Cambridge First All-Ladies Fire Brigade is an energetic ensemble musical about friendship, rebellion, and choosing action over silence — because when the system won’t change, the time is now.