The Making of Am I Pretty When I Cry?

The idea for the concept of the play was developed as I was trying to finish a different script which also tackled the theme of sexual abuse, and follows a character still dealing with their trauma years after the event. While struggling to finish this play, I got very sick of writing the abuser character, so I thought, why don’t I kill him? What initially was a lazy plot, then spurred on a series of ideas and questions that Abi and I discussed together. How can death change the way you know and remember someone? I put the previous play aside and began on a new journey with a new character. She was a nameless girl, any girl, and she brought her own story to life. I began pulling in pieces of poems and prose that I had found in the back of laptops and notebooks from months and years prior, and the play fell into shape piece by piece.

With masses of help from Abi and my classmates at central, especially Nina Fuentes, who helped me hugely in editing the script, we decided that it was time to begin putting the words on their feet. Abi devised a plan for how we were going to go about developing this play, and annotated my ever-changing script until there was barely a spare margin. We auditioned and casted Morgan Ferguson, and enlisted the help of our production manager Lottie Johnson, and began the rehearsal process. After every rehearsal with Morgan, Abi and I became more and more confident in the decision to keep the ‘girl’ of the script nameless and uncharacterised, because Morgan very quickly gave her a very personalised sense of vibrancy that brought hilarity, awkwardness and depth to what was, on paper, a very dark script.

- Nancy Edwards, writer

Rehearsals..

Where to begin? It’s hard to define when the rehearsal process began really. What’s key to my practice is not necesarilly defining when a project officialy starts. This sounds ridiculous I know but it feels unjust to disregard previous passing thouhts about plots , sets , movements and words as without them you woul dhave nowhere to go! This was applicable with this project. It seemed as if time flew by and myself and Nancy went from sittting on our kithen floor in the ealry hours of the morning with sore eyes from staying awake discussing the ‘girl‘ to carrying bits of set through London ready to make our companies debut.

The inbetween is blurry but what remains clear in between the coffee runs , snack and dance breaks and post rehearsal debreifs is how incredible Morgan was. We got many self tapes but there was something In Morgan’s eyes that could tell a story we hadn’t finished yet and we knew she was who we needed on this show. Due to the content of the show I knew that we had to bring light to it in order to iluminate Nancy’s beautiful words. This was done in wild workshops of blasting music , running around with ad libs that never made the final show and insane excersises that Morgan took on without batting an eyelid. That chaos and allowing ourselevs to play is key to Chapter and something that we belive is vital to theatre making.

-Abi Deane , Director

Filming

I knew from when Nancy first read me the script in the early hours of the morning I saw it almost as a film. The landscape, the sounds, the environment were painted so vividly with Nancy’s writing that it created a canvas to explore everything that can’t be said with just words. This alongside my love for multi-media led to projections, film and became key to the storytelling. The editing then led to trailers and teasers being released. Moreover, another thing that is key to our ethos is being accessible, so we did a full length recording on closing night that anyone can access via our contact form on the site.

As this was our debut show, we worked extra hard on filming, with what little budget we had, so we could get the best promo for our little unknown company!

On the day, although our Production Manager Lottie did her utmost to book us a room for filming, we ended up having to film in our little flat, which we think worked out all for the better!

credits for this production

CAST

Girl

MORGAN FERGUSON

Currently training at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, having previously trained at Glasgow Clyde College. I also write and perform my own poetry and have created and presented content for BBC The Social.

Theatre Credits include: Terrence the T-Rex (Apropos Theatre Edinburgh Fringe), PAL: Your AI Care Companion, Press 2 for Help (Citizens Theatre Young Company), Beginnings (Citizens Theatre WAC Ensemble), Cinderella (FizzGig Theatre).

TV Credits include: Short Stuff (BBC Scotland), Sadie Smith (BBC Alba/Purple TV).

Credits while training include: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Picasso’s Women, Peter Pan, Buckets (Glasgow Clyde College).

Production Team

WRITER - Nancy Edwards

DIRECTOR / PRODUCER - Abi Deane

STAGE MANAGER / REHEARSAL PHOTOGRAPHER / STAGE MANAGER - Lottie Johnson