Dulwich Home Truths

?I?m an avid people watcher. Restaurants, waiting rooms, supermarket check out queues and school car parks are perfect venues to see how the world and his wife cope with their kids.

After a few years of life as a stay at home mother and observing that I was not the only one to find it challenging, it struck me that one person?s stress must be another person?s comedy and I started carrying a notebook around with me and recording situations, often direct quotations (?there?s no such thing as a nice walk!? ? Toby (14), which I put into in short sketches to perform? at school fundraising events. There was no shortage of material and over the years it has just got better and better as my own children and their friends have grown older and modern parenting methods have been forced to try to keep up with or, better still, a step ahead of modern teenagers. Fat chance!

In 2007 I decided to write a full length play, conscious of the rule that writers should only cover subject they know.

By now parenting was all I did know about so I created the Rich family: a harassed mother, unhelpful father, three difficult and demanding children and a bewildered granny. Are these characters based on real life? Definitely not. I only have two children and my husband is better than me at most domestic tasks. My mother is fully compos mentis too. As for me, I am a model of calm and serenity. Ask anyone.

I am, however, a control freak so I decided to perform every part myself. In a one-woman play there?s no one else on stage to take over during?off-stage?costume changes so I rely on alterations of body language, posture, expressions and voices to distinguish between the thirteen or so male and female characters who feature in all of my plays. They range in age from 15 to 80. People seem to like my 80 year old, bewildered granny. I prefer the 16 year old, casual boy.

In 2008 I took my first play to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in order to have an adventure and to discover whether my sense of humour was shared by audiences beyond those at home in Warwickshire. Imagine my job when it achieved overall sell-out status! Since then I have written four more plays in what I call the Ruth Rich Saga and writing and performing is now my full time occupation. Its highlights have a subsequent sell-out run in Edinburgh in 2010, performing to HRH Princess Anne and to one of my favourite film idols, Greta Scaachi, and appearing in venues ranging from Trafalgar Square?s Fourth Plinth to a?millionaire?s?living room in the posh end of Sussex (Excellent people watching material there too, I can say!)

The next highlight on the horizon is my performance at the Michael Croft Theatre. Why? Because I shall be performing two plays in one night. ?Double Booked? which sold out in Edinburgh in 2010 and its sequel, a new play for 2012, ?Something Fishy?. The plays (which require no knowledge of any other Ruth Rich Saga play) feature the antics of the Rich family as Ruth, the mother, attempts to save face by telling a few little white lies, only to discover that her nemesis, the perfect but perfectly awful, Tim?s mum has bigger fish to fry. When, a year later, Ruth decides to leave her daughter at home alone for a week in ?Something Fishy?, the fish suffer a worse fate.?

?Home Truths? is at the Michael Croft Theatre, Townley Road, Dulwich SE22 8SU on Friday 30th?November 2012 at 7.30 pm. Tickets (?13 or ?8 concessions) available from 0208 557 1541 or?www.michaelcrofttheatre.org.uk.

For more information about Ginny Davis go to www.ginnydavis.com

Source: http://dulwichonview.org.uk/2012/11/09/dulwich-home-truths/

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