QUFF....the process

Quite Unsuitable For Females, or QUFF as we are now calling it, has thoroughly taken on a life of it’s own. This past week we held auditions at The Royal Oak in Lewes, bringing together actors and singers to audition for our principle roles, and also for a Greek-chorus-come-football-choir to stand on the proverbial terraces and commentate on the action downstage. We welcomed some incredible performers, saw what the relationships might be like between our main characters and heard the songs I had written sung by strong, emotive voices.

This last part, for me, was incredibly moving and affirming. Writing the music for a show which is active and alive, whilst sitting on my own at home at a piano is strange feeling. I never know what is going to land and what isn’t, what is going to feel awkward and cheesy and what is going to connect emotionally. There is an added level to it here because there is an element of ‘football’ that I desperately want to capture. Being surrounded by voices at a football match is so different to that of other musical environments, the community and the strength in numbers. Somehow that very simplistic melodic style of football chants is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve, I guess the notion of those things being born in a certain community is where the heart of the songs are, and that’s why they stick. I did however, receive a comment on one of the songs that ‘its like a football chant!’ and that absolutely made my day!

In November, we took a trip to the North West to do a deep dive into the history of women’s football at the time of the ban. We travelled first to Deepdale Stadium in Preston, home of the Dick, Kerr Ladies and more recently, to the National Football Museum archives. It was here we met with Gail Newsham, the most passionate and knowledgeable person when it comes to the history of the Dick, Kerr Ladies Football team. Although QUFF isn’t about them, there is so much rich history in the story of the Dick, Kerr ladies and it was incredible to talk to Gail about them in detail, hearing what they were really like and what it meant to them to play football. We then travelled to Manchester to our air bnb and straight out to Salford’s The Lowry to see a scratch night for musical theatre- which was a brilliant platform for new work! The following day we were situated at The National Football Museum just outside Victoria Station, to absorb the material on show and chat to Dara Laughlin (participation producer) about how we can put some of our QUFF material on show when we eventually take it on tour!

We also visited the People’s History Museum to look at all of the wonderful banners they have on show (banner making is also part of our process for QUFF, more on that soon) and read some of the rather ridiculous advice printed in the ‘The Labour Woman; a political monthly journal for working women’ that ran at the time of the ban- needless to say, it was not mentioned anywhere! On the final day we hosted a singing workshop in a box at Anfield (as you do…) and met some of the most wonderfully passionate and honest women, who we are very much looking forward to singing with when we bring the show back up north in it’s fullest form! We had such a wonderful time and came back with full heads- talking through it all over and over- finding the nuggets that would help shape our story.

Red, the director, has been working on uncovering the characters, who they are and how they relate to each other, how much of them is historically realistic and how much of them is timeless, dreamlike, surreal. Her process is part planning, but mostly curiously dreaming them into reality. Red has taught me that so much of this work is about revealing the essence again and again, coming back to what the facts are and what is truth. If we know our characters and the story line in a manner of reality- what can be believed in as truth, then the emotion of the story will follow. These past months have been a process of collecting all the pieces of the puzzle which will be revealed when we have the actors in the space. It’s all new to me as a way of working as I don’t come from a theatre making world, but the subtlety and the space here for a world to emerge slowly, like a deer through the trees, is an exciting way to work.

We have two weeks in February to spend allowing this to unfold. It might be that we work our way right up to a full show in those weeks, with songs and scenes and a strong story arc that needs little refining….or we might complete those weeks simply with some character improvisation and our chorus responding with their voices. What I do know is being immersed in a space with the sole intention of bringing this story to life is going to be an exciting experience- whatever we end up sharing at the end!