As the opening of the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 approaches, there are events happening all over the country to celebrate the tournament. As part of this, Futures Theatre toured their production of Offside, which first premiered in 2017, for the third and final time.
The show is written by Sabrina Mahfouz and Hollie McNish and tells the story of two aspiring women footballers – Keeley and Mickey – as they prepare for their first England training camp. It is set across three time periods – 1892, 1921 and 2022 – as Keeley and Mickey recount the lives of their icons, Emma Clarke, the first recognised black woman footballer in England, and Lily Parr, the icon of women’s football in England.
It is a soaring masterpiece that skilfully recounts the history and challenges of women’s football in England. The show celebrates the progress made in recent years, without shying away from the many problems that remain.
I saw Offside performed in Willesden Green Library on a very stuffy evening in June. I spoke to Elizabeth Hope, who plays Keeley and Lily Parr, a couple days later over Zoom and she spoke of the demands of acting in such conditions, admitting it was a challenge.
“As an actor, when you’re in quite an extreme condition, with the heat and the humidity and the smallness of the venue, you just have to work twice as hard to remain mentally focused,” she said. “It kind of fit with a lot of the dialogue, you know, talking about sweating like a woman and being exhausted….I think we all just kind of played into that.”
Offside is an impressively physical play, with three actresses performing the actions of a football game. Hope said that learning the choreography had been ‘very demanding’ and involved a movement director who put the actors through their paces. This helped them build the stamina to perform the show.
“We did a lot of work on how they’re different to these modern day characters,” Hope said. “Their backstories and what their home life would be and how that would change the way that they’ve moved and they would speak….(Lily) was a tall woman so just embodying taking up that space, because she was a very charismatic and confident woman for her time. She was a bit of a trailblazer, she was a queer icon. She lived openly gay during the night, from the 1920s onwards, which is amazing. Anecdotally, you know, people say she was quite a character, quite funny, bold and confident so just kind of merging all that together to try and be as truthful to the interpretation that I want to portray as possible.”
Hope described herself as ‘a bit of a fangirl’ of Parr and said that the opportunity to play her was a ‘proper privilege’. In contrast, she did not have to do much research to find the voice and portrayal for Keeley. The actor is a former youth football star, having played for Leeds Ladies and the England Under-15 and Under-17 youth teams and this authenticity enhanced the show and Hope’s portrayal.
“I remember turning up to one of my first England camps when I was 15 and being really overwhelmed and being quite shy, because I wasn’t that outspoken, even though I was good at football,” she said. “I was the only person from Leeds who got picked but there were a lot of people from clubs like Liverpool and Everton and it was quite intimidating. They were all very confident so there are quite a lot of similarities, obviously, not necessarily with her personal backstory but just being a shy, awkward teenager going to this quite intimidating thing. It’s like putting on an England shirt, I could really bring a lot of my own lived-on knowledge to that.”
Hope quit pursuing a football career because she wanted to be an actor and ‘didn’t see a world where she could do both’. Performing in this show was ‘a little bit of the best of both worlds’ as it has allowed her to use her footballing training and knowledge – or ‘unique selling point’ as she termed it – in a production.
We closed the interview by reflecting on the myriad of opportunities young girls have now, compared to even when Hope was playing.
She said “A lot of (my) contemporaries, they had to have side jobs when they played for England and they don’t have to now. I think that is great that young girls can really see that as a viable career path and a viable future. I know I would definitely (have) put more serious consideration into not quitting if it had been where it is now. I got offered a scholarship to go and play in America when I was like 16. Sometimes, I think back and I’m like ‘Dad, why didn’t you just tell me to go, it sounded like a great opportunity and just study acting when you’re there’ but at the time, I don’t know, you have to be responsible for your own choices.”
While Hope may have stepped away from professional football, it allowed her to give a fantastic performance in Offside. The show’s run has now unfortunately finished, but there are other events happening all around the country to celebrate the opening of the EUROs. Take a look at what’s available in your area.
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