Lilly's Awesome Blog

Rehearsals are hotting Ug for Buxton Fringe 2015’s Grimm-est performance. Orange and Pip Theatre’s ‘Ugly’ is a bibbity bobbity bonanza of fun, friendship and feminism.

Today, our Fairy Godmother Eleanor Whitworth arrived to make sure we hit the stage in style. “Although it wasn’t very hard to make Annie and Poppy look ugly” says Whitworth “I think the stage make-up really began to put a sparkle of fairy dust in the air”.

I was inspired to reflect on why I wrote the play in the first place. I think a really cool thing about living when we are living is the pluralising of the traditional narratives which, in the past, dictated who had worth (and why). Nowadays, literature and art have a chance to truly complicate the easy definitions of good/evil, beauty/ugliness - to remind us that the people we are/can become are products of the continuous decision-making process we engage in. I was inspired by post-colonial narratives such as Jean Rhy’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’. Modern writers and artists have often given marginalised figures from literature a voice. I wanted to show audiences that stories never truly end.