THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Mary & The Hyenas, the newest album from Bristol singer-songwriter Billy Nomates, is also the soundtrack to a new play by Maureen Lennon that explores the life of the iconic 18th-century British writer, philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
“I didn’t know about Mary Wollstonecraft,” says Billy Nomates (real name: Tor Maries). “It seems history rarely embraces pioneering women. Her story is a compelling one. A true trailblazer, but a human being, ahead of her 1700s environment. I wanted to bring the music into the last few decades, a contemporary place, not wholly defined by now. An attitude and feeling that resonates across time and ages.”
Billy Nomates has performed across the UK and Europe, with notable appearances at Glastonbury and Later… with Jools Holland. Her 2023 album CACTI was released to widespread critical acclaim, and she has more new music coming soon.
Widely regarded as the mother of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a moral and political philosopher whose analysis of the condition of women in modern society retains much of its original radicalism. She worked as a schoolteacher, a governess and as a translator for a London publisher. Her first published book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) foreshadowed her later work on the place of women in society, titled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which as its core is a plea for equality in the education of men and women. The Vindication is widely regarded as the founding document of modern feminism. In 1797 she married the philosopher, William Godwin. She died days after the birth of their daughter, Mary Shelley.”