Yve Blake is a born story teller. The playwright and
star of the Queensland Theatre’s smash hit Fangirls showed the ability to spin
a yarn capable of luring people into her web while still in kindy.
She convinced all her friends that it was her
birthday the next week and they should bring presents. They did. It wasn’t. Her
mother made her return the gifts.
In fact, the woman behind Fangirls says those
childhood years could be where her storytelling skills were honed.
“I
was an only child so instead of going off and playing my siblings I would go
play with my toys and kind of find these elaborate dramatic storylines between
them,” she said.
Whatever
it is, it worked. Fangirls is being met with rave reviews and was singled out
for praise in one of the first interviews Lee Lewis gave after being announced
as new Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre.
“Queensland
Theatre has a huge hit on its hands in Fangirls,” Lewis told the ABC. “This
young exciting work will take the whole country by storm. It’s here and in
Sydney this year and next year, who knows how big this thing is going to go.”
If
you look at the musical’s posters and you might be mistaken for thinking this
is work about hysterical teen girls, pitched at hysterical teen girls.
While
young women will see their story reflected on stage, behind the glitz and
glamour there is a deeper story which goes a long way to account for the work’s
popularity.
“There
is low brow fun easy accessible humour in the show but it talks about some
really heavy themes actually. Being a teenage girl is fundamentally stressful
and difficult,” says Blake.
“I always describe this show as a Trojan
horse. It appears to be one thing but it smuggles a completely different thing
inside of it. So yeah the marketing is hot pink and it looks very glittery.”
What
is inside the glitter and hot pink façade is a story about the fragile nature
of teenage girls, a story about how difficult it is to parent a daughter
through these confusing years and a compelling take on how society trivializes
teen women.
For
Blake, there’s a glaring inconsistency in how a teen male football fan sobbing
at his team’s defeat is treated compared to a young woman obsessing over the
latest boy band.
The
genesis of the idea dates back four years to a conversation Yve had with the
13-year-old daughter of a friend who announced she was going to marry Harry
Styles from One Direction.
Blake
laughed.
“She
said ‘don’t laugh at me. I’m serious and I’ll show you because I love him so
much that I’d slash someone’s throat to be with him’.”
It
was a lightbulb moment that made Blake question why she found Paris Hilton so
compelling in her teens and why she felt that was something to be ashamed of.
“I
wanted to talk about the ways that we do young women a disservice by
underestimating them by telling them what they what they can and cannot be,”
said Blake.
And
she wanted to write something of a love letter to all those who have raised
daughters through this hormone-driven coming of age.
“I
know that when I was a teenager I was embarrassed of my mum because I just
thought that I knew everything and what could she tell me?” she confesses.
“I
really wanted to represent the challenge of being a parent to a teenager when you
know that they don't want to hear any of your advice.”
As
well as taking the Fangirls to Sydney to the Belvoir Street Theatre, the
concept is being turned into a television series in the UK and Blake is working
on an unrelated podcast musical, a feature film and a musical for families.
Like
Fangirls, there’s a lot more going on than you might imagine looking at the
small quietly-spoken woman in the reflective heart-shaped sunnies, peasant
shirt and demin shorts.
It’s
been a wild ride for a woman who gave up performing in her early 20s after
feeling burnt out following a series of one woman shows.
But
she’s happy she took on the challenge of both writing and starring in her first
musical.
“I
decided at the end of the day maybe it was important to me to do this and close
the loop because in so many ways this work is like what I wish I knew when I
was 14 and it was important for me too.”
Fangirls
is playing at the Bille Brown Theatre until October 5
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