FLOWER GIRLS

Graeae, one of the UK’s leading disability theatre companies, is about to launch its autumn tour with a new play by Richard Cameron. Here, the writer talks about the inspirations behind Flower Girls.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE FLOWER GIRLS?
Graeae thought there was a story somewhere in the history of The Crippleage, a residential workplace for disabled women in Edgware, and asked me to research the possibility of creating something around this. I looked through a lot of archive material and spoke to some of the ‘girls’, now in their eighties and nineties, who still live in a care home on the site of The Crippleage. They had been there all their adult lives and were remarkable women. It quickly became evident that this was too special to ignore – I had to find a way to make it into a stage play. The result is based upon true events, though my ‘girls’ are almost entirely fictitious.

WHAT IS THE PLAY ALL ABOUT?
It’s not a play about disability, it’s a play about love, loss, fun and support in the lives of six disabled women living in a residential workplace. It’s set during the war in 1940 and later in 1965. How will they deal with the loss of one of the girls from the winter of 1940? In 1965, the home’s doors are opened to men for the first time. How will they cope with the changes?

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO TACKLE THIS SUBJECT?
The world that the archive material revealed was incredible and unknown to most of us. The ‘girls’ I met were truly wonderful women, without a trace of bitterness. On the contrary they looked back with a gratitude and fondness for what they had. The time is right to tackle this issue because we must celebrate and honour the lives of these women before they’re forgotten. It’s important to try to understand what institutional life was like for disabled women in a century of change, to glimpse what they endured without self-pity, to reveal their strength, humour and mutual support. The rights and needs of disabled people have been agonisingly slow to be acknowledged. We can view these women’s lives as separated from society and with dull repetitive work for bed and board, or we can see The Crippleage as one man’s enlightened vision to improve their lot. I know the women are all immensely proud of the work that they did.

HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU THINK IT IS TO REPRESENT DISABILITY ON STAGE THROUGH TELLING THE STORIES OF DISABLED PEOPLE AND BROACHING SUBJECTS AROUND EQUALITY, DISCRIMINATION AND INSTITUTIONALISATION?
I’m going to open myself up to all sorts of criticism here, but I honestly think ‘issue’ plays, if their primary function is to open up an issue and examine it, are dead before they start. Plays, if they stand any chance of being seen, are always about love, the lack of it, and why we do the things we do to hurt one another. Audiences don’t want to watch a play about what it’s like to be disabled. I’m sorry if that offends, but it’s true. So what do you do? You come at it from a different angle and present ordinary, recognisable feelings in extraordinary circumstances. From there, you just have to trust that the issues will percolate through of their own accord. Forcing them to be displayed is just some writer climbing on a soapbox. Who wants to know what I think about disability? Are my thoughts on it worth you spending more than two hours of your lives listening? Of course not. So I write about love, loss, friendship and support. Let’s face it, if I had any hope of honouring the women I learnt about, I had to do right by them. They never made their circumstances an ‘issue’. They just got on with it.

WAS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU THAT DISABLED ACTORS TAKE UP THE ROLES IN YOUR PLAY?
I’ve learnt a great deal in the process of working on this play. To begin with I just wanted great actors – if it were left to me (and of course, as writer, it never is) I would have chosen by acting ability alone. I believed that to choose from disabled actors only would narrow the field, and we could end up missing someone remarkable. Thank goodness I never voiced my thoughts. We workshopped ideas in the play with around 24 disabled actors and at the end of the day had our six girls. What a revelation! I know already that these six will take what’s on the page beyond words. They know the world my characters inhabit because, despite the efforts being made these days, not enough has changed with regards to perception of disability.

WHAT KIND OF REACTION DO YOU THINK THE PLAY WILL PROVOKE?
I suppose what I want to do is surprise. Flower Girls is not exactly what you might expect a play about disabled women to be. At least, I hope it’s not. It’s not a completely alien world to people who have no experience of disability. The place may be, their disabilities may be, but the way they live their lives is, I hope, recognisable and real. It’s about love, sex, death, friendship and loneliness. If that makes audiences feel uncomfortable to begin with, great. By the end, I hope audiences will feel for the women’s courage and understand the pain and joy of just getting on with it.

FURTHER INFORMATION
Flower Girls will be performed at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich
(01473 295 900) from 5-13 October, the Drum Theatre in Plymouth
(01752 267 222) from 16-20 October, and at Hampstead Theatre in London
(020 7722 9301) from 23-27 October.

WHO WERE THE FLOWER GIRLS?
Although the events and characters in the play are fictitious, the story behind Flower Girls is entirely true. The flower girls were physically disabled and sensory impaired women of different ages who made artificial flowers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of them lived and worked in The Crippleage, an institution comprising sheltered accommodation and factories where the women created flowers from silk, satin and other materials. John Grooms Crippleage and Flower Girls Mission, as it was known, was set up in 1866 by the evangelical preacher John Groom, who was concerned about the number of destitute disabled girls who sold flowers to theatre-goers late at night on the streets of London.

Some people may feel uncomfortable when they hear the name The Crippleage, but it’s important to remember that John Groom – who was just 21 when he started his work changing the lives of disabled women – was well ahead of his time. He recognised the need to break the cycle of dependency for people with disabilities and was so worried about the girls he saw on the streets of London that he opened several factories for them to work in and provided them with rented accommodation in Clerkenwell, essentially establishing a mission which gave the girls shelter and let them earn their keep. Eventually, in 1932, the whole operation was moved to a large estate in Edgware which combined work rooms, accommodation and gardens. In addition, he opened an orphanage in Clacton-on-Sea, numerous children’s homes and housing schemes for disabled adults.

John Groom was a true visionary and had an attitude towards disabled people which was revolutionary in Victorian England. This legacy continues today – since its recent merger with Shaftesbury, the organisation that bears his name has become the largest Christian charity in the UK working to promote the rights and choices of disabled people. And the work that the young John Groom began more than 140 years ago still makes a difference to more than 10,500 disabled people and their families each year.

For further information on Grooms-Shaftesbury please call 020 7452 2000 or visit
www.grooms-shaftesbury.org.uk.

September/October 2007.