Janice Connolly’s latest project is a cautionary story for over protective grandparents, or is it? Alison Jones reports.

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By Women & Theatre’s standards their latest production is somewhat conventional – in its setting at least.

The performers are used to working on the most unconventional “stages”, from allotments to doctors surgeries to probation centres.

However, the first shows of their tour of the play The Bad One, will be in a regular, if compact, theatre space – The Door at Birmingham Rep. But what plays out on stage will certainly live up to their reputation for producing highly original and powerful work.

The Bad One is a reworking of a piece developed and written by Woman & Theatre’s artistic director Janice Connolly, who is better known in Birmingham stand up circles as her comedic alter ego Mrs Barbara Nice, first performed four years ago

It is described as “a quirky fairy tale where Gregg’s pasties sit side by side with red shoes and talking bears”. The plot concerns a lonely orphan who is virtually kept prisoner by her grandmother. The de facto parent has banned her from making friends and even from singing and dancing “because one thing leads to another”. But the play suggests that it is unhealthy for one side of the personality – the dark side – to be completely suppressed and a healthy person is one who embraces both.

“It really started with Jekyll and Hyde,” says Janice. “I was looking at a female version of that and it struck me that in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story there is this fear of the darker, more primitive side, the Hyde side.

She was particularly interested in the suppression of desires and natural urges and how this is affected by socialization.

“I also did a lot of research with women’s groups, with women who are on probation and with women who have used the mental health services. It struck me that we needed both sides. We can’t say that one side of us is evil and the other good, actually what we need is a balance of the instinctive and the taught, the tame and the wild.

“This time while I was revisiting the play I became interested in the left and the right side of the brain. The right side is responsible for instinct, for living in the moment whereas the left side is more to do with order, language, recognising patterns, learning from the past and concern for the future.

“It seems to me the left side seems to be in charge quite a lot, everything has to be proved, targets have got to be reached. All this testing of children seems to be testing what the left side of the brain can do and the more creative, instinctive side is not valued so much. But we are saying the healthy person is the whole person.”

Janice was also keen to introduce different artistic languages to the show. There is an increased use of music and also of film. A magician has been consulted to help them produce illusions.

It still retains its fairy tale structure, however.

“I just think they are really powerful . Even in this day and age when children have so much access to the internet and computers we are still told fairy stories. They are part of our understanding of life.”

In spite of its more fantastical elements the play is informed by what is happening in the real world, sometimes unnervingly so.

“When I was re-writing this all the news reports about the Austrian grandfather (Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter and the seven children he fathered with her imprisoned in the basement for more than 20 years) were coming out so that had a resonance to the story, which is about a grandmother trying to control her granddaughter, trying to keep her pure, to ‘protect’ her.

“It looks at why people do these things. I don’t believe in evil but I think something has to have happened to the people who do these things for them to do it to other people.

“What happened in Austria was really shocking and the play is kind of set in that Hansel and Gretel world, all these lovely houses but nobody really knowing what is going on underneath.

“We think it is polite and civilised to mind your own business, so the more civilised we get the more chance of these things happening. Everyone will be putting up a front and nobody will be asking questions.”

One particular theme that interests Janice is that of transgressive women who buck social norms and indulge in unconventional behaviour.

Even now with the advances made in feminism, she feels that women can be more harshly judged than men if they don’t act in a certain way or take on a more submissive role.

“I remember reading articles about how we should learn to be good listeners, that men want you to listen to them and nod at the right time, not to have ideas of your own.

“We have come a long way but even now because the company is called Women and Theatre we have people going ‘don’t you like men then?’ You think things have moved on but they haven’t that much.

“We want people to come and see this, not get put off by the name of the company and think it is just women having a go at blokes, it isn’t.

“None of our work is about that. There is a man in the story and he is the most balanced character, he is not the baddy, he is a hero.”

Women and Theatre actually began life 25 years ago as a short course of drama workshops funded by the Workers’ Educational Association, which lead to the production of a piece about teenage pregnancy and a peace pantomime.

Janice was one of the founder members who decided to form a theatre company devising theatre that was relevant to the experiences of women.

It has expanded its fields of interests to cover issues that also affect men and families, such as health care. The production they staged in a Walsall allotment was about obesity and healthy eating.

“We get a brilliant response. The work we do is very accessible and fun. It is always based on real things so audience relate to it. I always try and use peoples actual words because I think they have a fantastic turn of phrase.”

Janice’s involvement in the play means she is unable to participate in Birmingham’s annual comedy festival, even though Mrs Barbara Nice is one of the leading light’s of city stand up.

She knuckled down to rehearsals shortly after returning from the Edinburgh Festival where she has been appearing in the play The Office Party. She has also completed a role in the new British film Snappers, about an It girl being stalked by paparazzi who takes refuge on a caravan site. Janice plays the site’s owner while singer Joss Stone plays a chalet maid and is also writing the music. It is being directed by Phil Middlemiss, better known as Coronation Street’s Des Barnes.

“We filmed it in Torquay and it was great. It made me think this is what it must have been like making Carry On films. We just laughed from beginning to end.

“I am really busy at the moment, up and down the country. It is okay but the travelling gets to be a bit much. I don’t drive so I always seem to be at New Street Station.

Janice, who is married with two children, was a drama teacher in Shirley before she started performing full time.

“I had always been interested in it but coming from a working class background I didn’t really know anybody that did it, so I decided to teach.

“Then I was in a band in Moseley around the time of UB40 and The Beat. I was doing that in the evenings while teaching .and I decided to take the leap and stop teaching. Then I worked for Barnardo’s for a year while doing pub theatre in the evening.”

Once the tour of The Bad One is completed, Janice will be going on tour as Barbara Nice in Hiya and Higher and she has also been invited to join Variety Lives, which is being organised by the husband of the late comedienne. Linda Smith.

And after guest appearances as Holy Mary in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights, as well as a guest spot as his mother in Coronation Street, Janice could be getting her own show after recording a pilot for BBC Two.

“Even now with all this theatre, with stand up and other acting I don’t think I have taken the leap as a performer,” she says somewhat perversely.

“I still think I am only at the beginning.”

* The Bad One at The Door, Birmingham Rep from Sept 23-27. Tel: 0121 236 4455.