Worthing playwright Rebecca Frew has realised her ambition of writing and staging six plays in just over a year.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to
00:06speak again to Rebecca Frew. Now, Rebecca, you are on the verge of achieving something
00:11fantastic really. Your first play was just over a year ago, and so in just over a year
00:16you will have produced, written, had performed six plays. Now that was your aim, wasn't it?
00:23And you like even numbers, six had to be the number. That must be a source of great success.
00:29It's a great satisfaction to know that you had this aim. And here we are, just over
00:33a year later, you've done it. You've got some plays coming up. Barmaids in September in
00:38Worthing and The Highway Rags in September in Worthing. You must be chuffed to have achieved
00:43those six plays that you wanted to do. Yeah, definitely. It's really exciting. And
00:50yeah, I'm glad that I've got to this point. And well, there's still a few months of the
00:55year left, so let's see what else we can do. Yeah, you could push it to seven or eight,
00:59couldn't you? Yeah. You were saying that you have, in the nicest way, plenty of voices
01:03in your head. That's the genesis of it all, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. There's a lot
01:08going on in there. And what about the writing? Does it get easier? You were saying you weren't
01:14necessarily getting more confident. No, definitely not. Like there is a lot of
01:19self-doubt all the time. I think any writer feels that. But, you know, we've had some
01:24fantastic feedback and I'm really excited just to keep on going and hopefully keep on
01:29entertaining people. Yeah. And it was great to have you at the
01:32Festival of Chichester this year. Yes, that was a really good one.
01:37Yeah. Which was the play that we had at the festival this year?
01:42That was Hooker of Florence. Oh, of course. Yes. A thriller. Suspense.
01:47Yeah. But this summer also, by force of circumstance, you made your acting debut in one of your
01:54own plays. How did that come about then? We unfortunately had an actor drop out. So
02:03with 24 hours notice for the Worthing Theatre Trail, and there was no way I was going to
02:08cancel the show. So I thought, I wrote it, so I will just go and act in it reluctantly.
02:16You make it sound easier than it was. It was absolutely terrifying. I was doubting
02:23myself all along, but we got through it and now I'm going to do it in London.
02:28Fantastic. What was the difference that it made, the fact that you were saying your own
02:32words? The playwright is the actor. It was very weird and in some lines I thought,
02:41why have I written this? It's much more complicated than it needs to be. But yeah, it was a massive
02:47eye-opener to understand sort of the other side of it and what I'm asking actors to do.
02:53So there's a good inside then, wasn't it? Yeah, definitely.
02:57And the plays coming up in September are Bar Mids, which we've spoken about before, but
03:02also the new piece, The Highway Roads. Now tell me a bit about that one, without giving
03:07away too much. So The Highway Roads is about two women, Eliza
03:13and Molly. And Eliza was a lady and her husband's just died, so she's been left penniless.
03:20She's going to lose her house and her servant, Molly, is going to go and look for another
03:24job. But they end up sticking together and trying to find ways to make money, which don't
03:31always pan out how they expect. The clue being in the title.
03:35Yes. And they're not necessarily brilliant at it.
03:39Pardon? They're not necessarily brilliant at it then?
03:42No, they're not. No, but they have a lot of fun along the way.
03:46Yeah. But that's interesting because it does illustrate the range of your plays, all sorts
03:51of different types of plays, different circumstances, different eras by the sound of it. You're
03:56a very diverse writer, aren't you? Yeah, I like sort of testing and seeing,
04:02you know, different things that I can write. The Highway Roads came about just because
04:06I wanted to write about highway women and others have come about from novels or just
04:12other ideas in my head. So, yeah, just testing different things.
04:15Fantastic. Well, congratulations on achieving your very neat even number of plays, six in
04:21a year. And here's to lots more. Lovely to speak to you again, Rebecca. Thank you.