Interview: The Not So Ugly Duckling

Jo and Maria, who are neighbours in the same Leith block of flats and became friends last year, were inspired to create the show during lockdown afternoons spent watching the lives of their neighbourhood ducks and swans. Here, they speak about The Not So Ugly Duckling, performing together and how audiences have shaped the script over time.

Jo Clifford: I suppose I started it really. I'd been performing my show The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven for some years and then I performed a show called Eve with the National Theatre of Scotland. I love performing and I'm very new to performing. I was completely blocked when I was young by my shame for being trans. And it was only really in my late 60s, actually, that I kind of went, ‘Oh, yeah, I enjoy this.’ After the experience with the Gospel and the experience with Eve, I thought, I'd like to work with somebody, because it's more fun to be working with somebody on stage than to be on your own. And then this glamorous neighbour appeared, who turned out to be an actress. And that was Maria. So I wouldn't say it was love at first sight – that would be a bit of an exaggeration. But we discovered we got on together and I suggested that we make a play together. And she agreed, I don't quite know why, but she agreed.

Maria MacDonell: You did come and see me perform. We didn't just meet at the bins!

Jo Clifford: That’s right, I did see you perform. And then the question was, okay, if we're going to write something together, what will it be? I happened to suggest Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling. That was simply because years and years before, I'd been at a conference of trans activists in Europe. One of the speakers was an amazing trans woman called Vladimir Luxuria, who had been an Italian MP, and a prostitute and an incredibly vocal pioneer for trans rights in Europe. And she said, we've always been around, we've always existed throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, but the difficulty we've had in Europe, is that we've not been able to express ourselves freely; if we keep our eyes open, and think about it, we can find traces of us in very unexpected places. She mentioned Hans Christian Andersen and she spoke about some letters that he wrote to men he loved saying, I feel very, very feminine when I'm with you. She said, Well, maybe Hans Christian Andersen was one of us, but he couldn't write about it openly. But you can see this reflected in stories like The Little Mermaid, and The Ugly Duckling. I thought that was really interesting. I suggested to Maria that we read it again together. It appealed to Maria for completely different reasons, which is one of the joys of us working together. Is that fair enough, Maria?

Maria MacDonell: Yeah, I think so. I was delighted that Jo asked me to work with her and I'm very interested in life stories. And Hans Christian Anderson, said quite openly that The Ugly Duckling was the story of his life. When it was first published, it wasn't even named in the publication as a children's story. His other work obviously was known as being for children, but he didn't call this a children's story. He used to read it aloud at gatherings of adults. I was very interested in that respect. The way that we wrote the piece was that we spent a lot of time investigating and talking about each other's lives. Because Jo and I both have more to look back on than we have to look forward to – though we're both looking forward to being in the Fringe. But there's more material in the past, because we are older. It felt very important for finding our mutual voice. Because we have had some familiar shared life experiences and some very, very different and that's what we were very keen to bring to the piece. Does that seem like a fair answer, Jo? We have not conferred in advance!

Jo Clifford: Yes, I think that’s a very fair answer! It's lovely working with somebody else. Because I mean, I've written loads and loads of plays on my own, and you get stuck, often. And it's miserable. But when you get stuck with somebody else, you can complain about it a lot, can't you? You can laugh about it. And usually you get through it. Well, in fact, we did get through it because we managed to finish the script, which was amazing.

Maria MacDonell: I think the joy of collaborating is that you very quickly become aware that you can create things together that you would never have thought of on your own. The outcome has that inner strength of all those different energies that the two of us brought to this.

Jo Clifford: I know we've discovered a way of telling the story in a very vivid way, in a very lively way, in a way that absolutely uses live theatre. So this is a piece that can really, at the moment, only work in a theatre. That's very, very important. It works through the simplest material means; there are no special effects, no scenery, really. It's just our voices and our presence and our bodies and words that tell the story. I think there's a good energy between us, I find it a lot fun working with Maria and being on stage.

Maria MacDonell: I like being in the dressing room with you, Jo! Waiting to go on stage together, we always have a good laugh. I always think that when somebody buys a ticket to go and see theatre, and I'm talking as an audience member and as a theatre maker, it's a kind of a contract – that person is coming in and saying: ‘I come open hearted and open minded. I am ready to be moved.’ That's how I earnestly hope that people always leave the theatre, feeling different from when they came in. Something has happened physically and emotionally to them. That's really our purpose, to carry people with us through this story. We have minimal scenery, but it's absolutely stunningly designed. It's just got such a wonderful effect.

Jo Clifford: Lovely music too.

Maria MacDonell: Yeah, the sound design and the lighting; it all comes together very, very nicely.

Jo Clifford: The other thing I really love about it is that the average age in the rehearsal room is always approximately 125.

Maria MacDonell: Well, our sound designer is 25. And then me and the designer are 63, the technician is 67, possibly, and I think Ian the director is 74. And Jo you're 71.

Jo Clifford: And it's just brilliant. One of the things that it's taught me is – because I've been in so many rehearsal rooms where there's a sort of assumption that you're young and you're fit and you can do anything – that it's great to be somewhere where you can be old, groan a bit, because you can't get onto the stage because your feet are hurting.

Maria MacDonell: I mean, we're in stitches a lot of the time, aren't we? I think with older people performing; there's just so much unspoken life experience brought to the stage which is very valuable. We really do need to value our older people.

Jo Clifford: We're in a really lovely venue too, which is run by gorgeous people. They treat their staff decently, treat audiences decently, there's good provision for accessibility and there's a happy working atmosphere. All that is very important.

Maria MacDonell: I think for all that it is really exciting that there are so many pop up venues during the Fringe, it is lovely to be working in a space which is a cultural hub all year round. The ethos that the Scottish Storytelling Centre has runs through absolutely every aspect of its activities. From the cafe and box office, the bookshop, to the technical side, there's just so much respect and happiness.

Jo Clifford: Yeah, it's generous, it's welcoming, it's respectful. It's creative. It's a great place to be. And that’s important for our show. I think we've understood, or at least I've certainly understood the need to think about audiences differently. When an audience comes in to watch a show, they are traumatised. I would say they're traumatised, firstly, by what everybody's been through in the pandemic, which has just not been thought about or acknowledged. But also, everyone is terrified by the cost of living crisis and terrified by the climate crisis. People are very afraid, and people are very despairing. As artists, our job is absolutely not to feed that despair or to feed off it. But to try to create something that is positive, truthful and offers a way forward. 

Maria MacDonell: The story’s not an easy ride though, is it?

Jo Clifford: There's a definite dark side. Part of our job is to tell the truth. But the truth is not altogether dark, I don't think.

Maria MacDonell: It's not a piece of COVID theatre. Obviously, the collective experience will be in there. I suppose maybe also because we're older, you learn about disappointment, frustration, letting go. We've been very patient, we've just kept on working. It does mean that we've probably had a longer development period than we would have done which has been good. It means that this script has really mellowed and simmered and bubbled and boiled and cooled and heated and all the time we've remained patient. 

Jo Clifford: I think that's a really good analogy. It's like one of those soups that you keep on the stove. One of the things that has really distressed me about the Fringe over the years is that it's very difficult to prepare for it properly. Because technically, how long have you got the space? Half a minute, if you're lucky. Whereas, this is our home space and by the time August comes, we will be ready. I think audiences will get a better experience because of that.

Maria MacDonell: We've performed it five times, but because these were development performances that we did in the spring, we had very honest and open question and answer sessions with the audience afterwards. Then those comments that chimed with us, we then responded to and changed the play in some way. When I say we haven't performed it the same way twice, I don't mean the script has been the same but we've discovered new things. We've actually changed it every single time we performed. And we made some pretty fundamental changes as a response to audience feedback. It's been created in dialogue with live audiences. I think I would say it's very unusual. It's poetic. It's exciting, thought provoking, and moving.

Jo Clifford: Yeah, all those things. For me, the whole experience of performing, it's still a novelty, actually. And Maria knows much more about these things than I do. It was just that whole joy for me of discovering things inside myself that I never knew were there. I'm pretty proud of the show, and proud of what we all do. I think it is original. I think it is unusual. And I think it's pretty amazing.