The play comes to the MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton from March 20-22 and then the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne from April 15-19 – inspired by the extraordinary true stories of the women who dared to fly during WWII and the incredible bond that tied them together.
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FunTranscript
00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Really lovely
00:06to speak again to Catherine Senior. Now, Catherine, you've written a fascinating play which highlights
00:11a pretty little-known aspect of World War II, The Spitfire Girls, which is on the road
00:16starting off in Southampton at Marst Mayflower Studios, March 20th to the 22nd and then going
00:24to Devonshire Park Eastbourne from April the 15th to the 19th. Now, how did you alight
00:30on this aspect of history and who were these Spitfire Girls?
00:35Yeah, I can't remember where exactly I heard about it but I came across them about, well,
00:43nearly 10 years ago and so in that time I've had three boys and written this play. So yeah,
00:50the Spitfire Girls were the women that delivered aircraft during World War II. So they would
00:59deliver them from the factories to the squadrons. Quite often they were aircrafts that needed
01:04something fitted or they were broken so then they had to be sort of brought back. So there
01:12was a lot of taxiing around these aircrafts and, you know, just 309,000 aircrafts were
01:20delivered during the war by the ATA and millions and millions and millions of miles flown.
01:25It was a huge civilian effort.
01:29Yeah, and essential work, obviously.
01:33Yeah, the RAF wouldn't have, yeah, they, I don't know what they would have done if they
01:41didn't have the ATA delivering these aircrafts for them.
01:45Was it breaking down the boundaries in some ways because they opted for women to fill
01:50these roles as pilots because they were running out of men?
01:54Yeah, they were. They, yeah, they called on the first eight pilots that joined up in 1940
02:04on New Year's Day. Those first women were pilots already. They were joyriders sort of
02:11before the war and I think some of them may have carried on with some of that when they
02:17were delivering aircrafts. I don't know. I've read the odd thing of them going upside down
02:22and there's the odd photograph of them doing lots of tricks. I don't think it was allowed,
02:26but I think they did it. I think they had sort of great fun amongst all of it. And then
02:30my play starts much deeper into the war in 1943 when they were then calling on women
02:37that were of a certain height and were physically fit. And they were putting ads out in newspapers
02:48and Aeroplane magazine was one of, is where the characters in my play see it and they
02:53sign up and quite often they wouldn't have driven a car or, yeah, it was.
03:01I mean, it must have been exhilarating.
03:03And you're not just the author, as if that's not enough, you're in it.
03:08Yeah, yeah, yeah, all being well. Yeah, yeah, I play Bette, yeah, who runs a pub.
03:18We're actually job sharing this role, so there'll be another actress playing Bette
03:23for half the week and I will be doing the first half.
03:26Perfect.
03:26Yeah.
03:27Well, it's called Spitfire Girls and comes to Southampton March 20th to the 22nd,
03:33and then Eastbourne April 15th to the 19th.
03:36Lovely to speak to you.
03:37Yeah.
03:38It goes brilliantly. Thank you.
03:39Great. Thank you very much, Phil.