Predictably, there has been some debate about the casting of the production, which sees Beverly Knight play Emmeline Pankhurst and Genesis Lynea star as Sylvia. But Prince has no time for the argument that black or Asian actors shouldn’t be able to play characters based on white figures from history.

“It’s not a documentary, it’s a piece of art,” she says. “And it’s not a story about race, it’s a story about gender. So I’m casting actresses and performers who I believe to be the most talented and the best suited to the roles.”

When casting the play, she explains, she wasn’t thinking about what “Emmeline Pankhurst [was] like 100 years ago. It was about [asking]: what would Emmeline Pankhurst be like today? It’s a modern piece of theatre, and modern London doesn’t look the same as it did 100 years ago. So why should we have an all-Caucasian cast?”

Ultimately, Prince hopes that the show will get more people thinking about the history of women’s rights. She cites the example of a 16-year-old boy, a member of ZooNation’s youth company, who came into the Old Vic to help her with a rehearsal. When he asked what the play was about, Prince told him that it was about the suffragettes. He replied, “What’s a suffragette?”

The thought of reaching people like that teenager is what keeps Prince going. “I hope someone like him might see this play and think twice about women and politics,” she says. “I hope someone like him could see our show and begin to have an appreciation, politically and historically, of gender politics – thanks to the style of the storytelling and the music.

“And maybe, someone like him might think twice about women or how he treats or speaks about women in the future,” she continues. “It’s all about making history relevant.”

SYLVIA is on at The Old Vic from 3-22 September. Get tickets from the box office by calling 0844 871 7628 or at oldvictheatre.com.

The Woman of the Week series is part of Stylist’s Visible Women campaign, dedicated to raising the profiles of brilliant women past and present. See more Visible Women stories here.

Meet the woman behind this autumn’s biggest feminist musical