Kirsty is a sixteen-year-old girl growing up in 00s Brentwood. She likes WKD, Elton John, Pie and Mash and Charlie Red body spray. She’s on a quest to win Sexy Ricky’s heart and pass her GCSEs. She also has a secret to tell you. One she can’t tell anyone else.
Follow Kirsty’s story through the house parties and Irish pubs of Essex. From West Ham matches to choir practice, pre-drinks to registration, she will tell you what it’s really like to be an Essex Girl.
Essex Girl is the second show from award-winning theatre maker and real-life Essex Girl, Maria Ferguson (Fat Girls Don’t Dance). It is a one-person monologue with minimal props and technical requirements, so adaptable to most spaces. This is a story of growing up surrounded by expectation. Of inappropriate relationships, female friendship, secrets, desires and alcopops. It questions how the Essex Girl stereotype influences young girls, what they want, what they think they deserve, and how they are treated.
Wonderfully funny and ultimately hard-hitting it will resonate with a wide audience, particularly millenials, or anyone who has got too drunk at a house party. It highlights the traditions and values of the British working class, leaving us to question our own thoughts around consent, silence and the role of women in the modern age.
