Difficult Women is a literary-folk music cabaret created in 1992, in Melbourne, Australia, by Lin Van Hek and Joe Dolce and has been performing internationally for 15 years.
During the witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, the term 'difficult women' was used to identify women targeted to be burned at the stake and for confiscation of their property by the church. Van Hek and Dolce's group has reclaimed this term and through a combination of theatrical vignettes, original music, songs, harmony singing and oration, brings to life women who were labeled 'difficult' for their willingness to defy what was expected of women in their time.
The show contains over four hours of material on visionary women such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Frida Kahlo, Memphis Minnie, Sonya Tolstoi, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Camille Claudel, Katherine Mansfield and Louisa Lawson.