THEATRE

By Mark Brown

Glasgow Girls, King's Theatre, January 15th-19th

People Make Glasgow. So goes the publicity slogan of the city’s council.

In 2005, at Drumchapel High School and in the housing estates in the north-west of the city, it was girls who made Glasgow. And they made headlines, too.

Faced with the detention and proposed deportation of their friend Agnesa Murselaj and her family (Roma asylum seekers from war torn Kosovo), a group of seven girls launched a famous campaign to keep their pal in Scotland. Known simply as the Glasgow Girls, the young activists (who included both refugee kids and the daughters of established Glaswegian families) shook the British political establishment.

With the assistance of teachers and people in their working-class communities, the girls succeeded in saving Agnesa and her family from deportation. More than that, their high profile campaign made a huge contribution to ending the government policy of “dawn raids”, in which immigration officers snatched asylum seeker families in the early hours.

The girls’ activism also impacted upon the much-criticised policy of detention of children seeking asylum (which the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government announced an end to in 2010, although activists insist the practice has continued, albeit in a reduced form).

The fame of the Glasgow Girls’ campaign spread like a wildfire. They won the 2005 Scottish Campaign of the Year Award. Two powerful TV documentaries were made about their story.

Then, in 2012, at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, came Glasgow Girls, a work of musical theatre by Cora Bissett and David Greig. Loved by audiences and critics in equal measure, the show told the story of the girls’ campaign with a winning combination of righteous anger, big-hearted optimism and brilliant songs.

Since then, the musical has gone through many performances (including a successful run during the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe) and various refinements. Now the show, which, according to Bissett (who conceived the piece and is its director), is slicker and tighter than ever before, is embarking on a 2019 tour.

When the latest incarnation of the musical opens at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre on Tuesday night, it will, says its director, be looking forward as much as it is looking back with pride on the events of 2005. “It’s not a history story for me, it continues its life”, she explains.

Bissett has collaborated with the Glasgow Girls since she first began working on the musical, and, with each revival of the show, she renews that contact. “Every time we bring the gang together, things have moved on”, she observes.

“They’re very different individuals, but you can see how the campaign has informed their lives. That, for me, makes their story a living, growing, beautiful thing.”

More than that, the on-going life of the piece is reflected in the appetite of teachers and school students to engage with it. “I’ve had a lot of high school teachers write to me asking for a copy of the script”, says Bissett.

“For them it’s gold dust, in terms of the various aspects of it that could be taught in class.”

A successful, Scottish stage work which embraces such issues as asylum rights, young women’s activism and the diversity of Scotland’s communities would seem to be a shoo-in for the high school curriculum. However, strangely (some would say outrageously), that is not the case.

The powers that be in Scottish education deem stage musicals ineligible as “dramas”, and, so, Glasgow Girls is excluded from the curriculum. A petition from teachers urging a rethink on the “no musicals” rule has come to naught.

Now, as the show spreads its magic across Scotland again, would seem like a good time for the country’s qualifications bosses to show a bit of flexibility. After all, as Bissett says, “Glasgow Girls has become an important Scottish piece now.

“That is who we are. That’s Scotland on that stage.”

Glasgow Girls tours January 15 to February 16. For tour dates, visit: www.rawmaterialarts.com