Notes on ' Frenchy'

In 1984 our strict Roman Catholic girls convent school merged its 6th form with the local RC boys school. In all its history, since the Sister of Notre Dame de Namur had founded the school in 1898, ‘males’ had never roamed its corridors, until now.  This monumental and life changing event was further heightened by a particularly opportunist and effervescent drama teacher. She suggested a plan, which she believed would smooth the transition and help unite the opposing sexes; to stage a musical. The musical she chose was the most famous high school musical of the time; Grease. Her idea and the subsequent events that were to unravel over the next year changed the dynamic of both schools and the pupils that attended them. As fantasy merged with reality the lives of the teenagers became so intertwined with their fictional counterparts that the stories within the ‘drama’ began to mirror those of their real lives. The subjects within the play; underage sex, teen pregnancy, smoking/drinking and the final triumph of sexual liberation over purity, were all particularly alien concepts for us young innocents, whose only previous dramatic experiences had been singing hymns in the chapel or playing the clarinet or viola. The female stereotypes within the play, and especially those of the five female leads (‘The Pink Ladies’), clashed violently with the teachings of the school, which were steeped in religion; faith, chastity and prayer. Only a year before we had stood in the town hall wearing our matching uniforms and singing “Notre Dame our alma mater, we are glad to sing your praise….we bow to your gentle rule, we are glad to be enlisted in the ranks of this your school”. Now these same girls were auditioning for roles where they would be blowing smoke rings, French kissing, glugging from wine bottles and ‘going all the way’. As the teenagers in the fiction ‘came of age’ and began flirting, dating and experimenting with sex, so too did its Catholic teenage cast.  Some strange and almost mystical transformation took place. Girls, who were once prim and shy, came out as bold and sassy, and bi-spectacled boys with nervous twitches, stutters and square haircuts became funny and almost cool as they worked on their dance steps and sarcastic American accented put-me-downs.

Every girl auditioned for the ‘Pink Lady’ roles. The girls sang, danced and acted their hearts out to secure a part, which could inevitably lead to spending more time with the boys. Each girl had an idea of which character they identified with, and the play duly satisfied us with its five limited stereotypes; the virginal innocent ripe for corruption, the tough risk taking leader with a vulnerable underbelly, the femme fatale, the fun-loving ditzy air head, and the loud overweight clown. At 16 we never thought to question these clichéd labels that would continue to haunt us throughout our adult lives. I was given the role of Frenchie.

Ten years later while writing a script for what would become Hypnodreamdruff  I was thinking about a character; a loner who never leaves the confines of her bedroom. I suddenly wanted to see the video of our school musical, which I knew had been recorded by one of the girl’s fathers at the time. I wanted to analyse the bedroom scene, which is the only scene where all five girls are alone together, and see how we played it. It turned out it was impossible to find the video. I began to question how I felt about these stereotypes now and wondered what it would be like to try to become all of these female ‘models’; one multifaceted character who embodied all their looks, quirks and gestures. I became this character; a woman stuck in time, constantly re-enacting the same scene over and over while searching for herself within it, and finding out that she could be all of them, and at the same time none of them at all…