Bryony Byrne, the writer and performer behind the acclaimed show Fan/Girl, invites audiences on a tongue-in-cheek ride through British adolescence against the backdrop of 1990s football. In this exclusive interview, Byrne shares insights into her exploration of why girls often stop playing football in their teens and how the show reclaims the joy of the game.
With Fringe First-winning director Ben Target’s comic touch, Fan/Girl playfully uses audience interaction, 90s music, comedy, clowning, and drag to evoke laughter and tears. The show delves into microaggressions, misogyny, and the challenges girls face in continuing to play sports.
Don’t miss Fan/Girl at Summerhall (Demonstration Room) from August 1 to August 26, 2024 (excluding August 12 and 19). Book your tickets now.
You’re bringing your show, Fan/Girl, to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. What can you tell us about this production?
It’s a solo show, sort of a hybrid theatre/comedy show with some absurdist elements. It’s just me onstage and I wanted to tell this story in a way that meant I would enjoy performing it every day. It’s a layered narrative, where I play myself as I am now, myself aged 10 & 11 and also Eric Cantona.
I take the audience back to 1998, my last day at primary school, and we journey together from primary school to secondary school to understand why I stopped playing football. It’s full of fun moments and 90s nostalgia and it’s both pretty funny and quite moving. Ben (Target, my director) and I both love games and audience interaction so we had a great time developing it together.
The show seems to have a very playful, interactive style incorporating audience participation, music, comedy and even drag elements. What inspired this multidisciplinary approach to storytelling?
My own background is very multidisciplinary – I’m a comedian with a background in improv, stand up and clown as well as a writer and actor. In my role as a production manager I also work with a lot of dancers and sound artists. I’ve always loved interacting with the audience but prefer the clown style of interaction to the more confrontational stand up style. It made sense to me to incorporate all of these different elements in a show about childhood, as when we’re very young there are no ‘disciplines’ as such. Kids are very good at moving between things and holding all the possibilities in their minds. It was important to me to make a show that felt like it how it feels to play when you’re young.
It’s a show about football but it’s also a coming of age story, from innocence to experience, and I wanted to bring that playfulness into the room to remind us of the children we used to be. I think losing the ability to play is one of the great losses of adulthood. Theatre is one of the places we’re still allowed to indulge in it, as is the sports field. But in theatre (unlike football) the spectators don’t always get the option to involve themselves as much. So I wanted it to be a bit less prescriptive in that way.
A core theme examines why many girls stop playing football as teenagers, despite the recent rise of the women’s game. What personal experiences or observations sparked your interest in unpacking this issue?
I played so much football as a young child. It was the one thing that all my friends did and we did it all the time, wherever and whenever we could. I’d sort of forgotten that it had been such a large part of my life until I went to a football match with my partner. Of course I wondered why I’d stopped playing, but more than that, I was curious about how something could go from being such a central part of your life to being something you never think about. This was compounded when I interviewed my old, primary school teammates and found that they had no relationship to football any more either, even though they were still so strongly associated with football in my mind. And the more I talked to people, the more I realised so many of us had had this experience.
You reconnected with childhood friends as part of the creative process. How did revisiting those formative years and relationships shape the narrative of Fan/Girl?
Those friends really shaped the person that I am today and I feel like I carry them with me in many ways. On some level the show is an homage to them and to that period in my life. Maybe making the show was an excuse to reconnect with them. Their testimonies were essential for adding depth and dimension to the narrative – they’d remembered so many details that I’d forgotten and it was fascinating to see the things that we’d carried forward from that time, and what we’d left behind.
It was also very validating to realise that I was making something that spoke to other people. One of my childhood friends joined a grassroots football club after watching Fan/Girl and I so I like to think that the circle was completed. The show’s been so generous to me, and I hope it feels generous to other people too.
Your show has already been performed in venues across the UK and USA. What has the audience response been like so far, particularly in engaging with the themes around gender expectations and access to sport?
This has been one of the greatest joys of performing the show. I’ve had people come up to me after the show and share with me their personal stories. This has ranged from two teachers expressing their frustration with the fact that their school still wouldn’t let girls do the triple jump until age 14 in case they break their hymen to men telling me that they used to play netball.
The response from women was something that I had anticipated, as that’s the perspective that I’m writing from, but the response from men has been a real unexpected gift. I love hearing people’s stories and I’m going to be collecting them in an audio archive at the Fringe if people are willing to share them.
What would you say to anyone considering booking tickets to see Fan/Girl at the Edinburgh Fringe?
Do it. Haha. Honestly though, it’s a very fun show with an emotional heart and I think you’ll be surprised and delighted by it (I promise it’s a lot funnier than my answers to this interview have made it seem). If you’re worried about the audience participation aspect then please don’t be, I promise I’m kind and I do all the work and we’ll have a nice time together. Also where else are you going to get to see Eric Cantona this Fringe?!
