Unfinished Histories

Michele Frankel Topics List taken from her interview with Susan Croft, April 2006. 
Video extract edited by Jessica Higgs.

This was a live interview at Theatre Museum.
Images from Michele Frankel’s scrapbooks, since donated to the Museum (now V&A Theatre Collections) were projected at the back.
The event was co-produced by Susan Croft, Michele Frankel and Angie Milan

Who Are the Guinea-Pigs?
Dartington College of Arts
Image: Newspaper piece on show
Working with Melanie Thompson
Training as teachers at Rolle College, had to do community show
Devised piece around contraception Depo-Provera Who Are the Guinea-Pigs?,
performed in Devon and Cornwall to women’s groups, followed by discussion
Performed at Women’s Festival at Drill Hall, 1977 and to doctors etc.
Issue hasn’t disappeared.
Image: review of festival ‘Women’s Work’ in Time Out
Importance of Kate Crutchley

New York
Image: Lament for Three Women, directed by Karen Malpede
Malpede's influence, pacifist, worked with Living Theatre including Judith Malina
Westbeth Theatre Centre

Beryl and the Perils 
Advertised in Time Out. Claudia Bolton’s and Didi Hopkins’s involvement
First show was about sex. Controversies in company
Working process. People in tears then turn trauma to humour
Image: Didi, Claudia, Laurel Jana Marks. Christine Ellerbeck
Its effect on her
Image: Beryl and the Perils Got Nuilty, flyer
Refusal to conform to stereotypical images
Image: photo and review on Nuts
On mental health and women. MF leaves company
What Beryl and Perils mean to her now

The Warp
Image: MF in Ken Campbell’s The Warp
MF did opening with Bill Nighy, 24 hour show
Images of women within it in supporting roles

New York 2
Image: hand-out  Women’s Street Theatre piece on nuclear contamination
In NY May 1978, then in Notting Hill, commissioned by Karen Malpede
Love and Danger, play on Edith Ellis, wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis and devised pieces on relationships
Rehearsal process
Performance anxiety
Issue of climate change, concern for planet
Led to acapella singing group Sitting Ducks
One-woman show at Women and Life on Earth Festival, 1981
Brought to Britain, pre-Greenham
Beryl and Perils tour to NYC

Burnt Bridges
Image: Familiar Stories flyer
Birte Pedersen founder of company in audience
MF directs – short rehearsal process
Lindsay Cooper wrote tango music
Evolved performance style
Vicky Licorish
MF decides to move on from personal history
Scripts have survived with Birte (and with Didi of B&P)

Directing work
Image: The Offshore Island by Marghanita Laski,
MF’s meeting Marghanita Laski
Original impact of the play about nuclear destruction, televised in 50s
Image: publicity flyer for The Offshore Island
Image MF at the time
Limbo Tales at Gate
MF’s ‘mans’ play’. 3 monologues
Jeanette Winterson involvement.
John Sessions’ first play, composer Rory Allen
Several times revived, on TV’s Alter Image
Image:
These Foolish Things by Philip Davis with Will Knightley and others
Scream and Dream Again by Cheryl Robson on glue-sniffing
Image: flyer Bag by Bryony Lavery, in its second run, with Josie Lawrence
First production was by Les Oeufs Malades
Video Wicked by Dilip Hiro, Half Moon YPT
Bhangra style videos, Romeo and Juliet story of East meet West, filmed an Asian wedding,
research linking with Mulberry Girls School in East End
John by Adele Saleem, Hard Corps
Inventive production. Kate Crutchley put her up for it.
The Misanthrope staff director. to Richard Eyre, National Theatre

Women’s Work
Conference of Women Theatre Directors and Administrators conference
Working with young women writers including:
Women Writers’ Workshop inc. Angie Milan
Second Wave Young Women’s Arts Project inc. April De Angelis, Judith Johnson, Nandita Ghose
Soho Poly

Moving to work as a teacher
Image: MF with her partner and son, Sunday Times article on women with only one child
Stayed in teaching because of enjoyment of motherhood, money and 13 weeks holiday
Working as home tutor with excluded children, speaking and listening in citizenship, behaviour groups