‘The Girls Get Younger Every Year’ (play). Open access and available to download.

In response to a request from the 1752 group and because it was always designed to be an activist workshopping tool, I have made my play The Girls Get Younger Every Day open access. It is available to download here: Thomas_The Girls Get Younger Every Year_script

I wrote this play several years after the experiences that inspired it had passed. I never expected to write about this time in my life, but once I began it came very quickly. It was liberating to write and I hope that it is cathartic to watch and perform.

It’s loosely structured on the form of Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre – which necessitates a depressing ending that acts as a springboard for a discussion of the issues it raises, and how to tackle them. My hope is that in supplying an audience with characters to use as proxies, they can then talk about related experiences without having to “out” themselves or others.

Thanks to Jim Kaufman, Sarah Woods and Adrian Jackson for feedback on the script. Thanks to Cardboard Citizens for prompting me to dramatise an issue that was “unresolved,” and creating a space where I could write it and we could laugh about it. Thanks to Anna Bull, Tiffany Page, Mijke van der Drift, and Leila Whitley for inviting me to workshop the play at their conference on Sexual Harassment in Higher Education (02/12/15), and to Goldsmiths College for supplying the materials.

Phil Thomas, 2017