Guest Blog: Director Ed White On LIPSTICK At Southwark Playhouse

Six months ago, I'd never heard of a play called Lipstick, nor had I imagined I'd be directing a four-week run at the Southwark Playhouse in March, but here we are - my directorial debut.

Flashback to August 2019: I'm an out-of-work actor looking for some inspiration, desperate to collaborate with talented people and be part of something worthwhile. I scroll through my contacts and email Lily Shahmoon, a writer friend I used to work with at the reception desk of a gym about three years ago. I asked her to send me any scripts she's happy for me to read. I told her I was bored and looking for inspiration.

She sent me Lipstick - a beautiful story about two very different teenage boys who form an unlikely relationship, both in dire need of some love and understanding, both struggling to fit in - and I love it. The script really spoke to me; I recognised these teenage boys, lost in a pool of confident naivety and shame.

"Both boys are played by women" it says at the front of the script. I admit this took me a while to get my head around, but eventually I understood what Lily is doing here: let's show an audience something that they are hard-wired to understand - a woman wearing make-up, a dress, heels (how ordinary), but this is a story about a teenage boy who sometimes dresses up.

It's a visual and theatrical tool that flips what the audience knows on its head and forces them to rethink how they see things. If that opens up a conversation about gender stereotypes and the pressures we put on young people - what we tell boys they should and shouldn't be, what we tell girls they should and shouldn't be - then I think that's a conversation worth having.

I felt quite strongly that this was a story that needed to be out there, particularly now. I emailed the script to my friend Rupert Henderson - a recent graduate of the brilliant Stage One new producers programme - who agreed with me and asked to hear a reading.

I sent it to my friends and amazing actors April Hughes and Helen Aluko, and sometime in September we sat round a table and heard Lipstick for the first time. It sparked some really interesting discussions between us and I had a glimpse of the conversations the audience might carry home with them or continue in the bar. We suspected this play was something rather special.

Our original plan was to get it on in London for one, maybe two nights and then try and get it to the Edinburgh Fringe, but after the reading Rupert and I decided the play was screaming for a longer London run. So we rehearsed another reading, this time for an invited audience of anyone and everyone we could convince to come along.

The reading was the last week of November, and by the first week of December we had an email from the Artistic Director of the Southwark Playhouse offering us four weeks in March. The Southwark Playhouse was high on our wish list - they champion bold new writing and are all about facilitating the work of emerging theatre-makers. It was a very easy decision for us.

And now, we're in production - just over six months since I sent that first email to Lily asking for a script and not a year since she finished writing it. I've never mounted a play from scratch before, so I'm no expert, but I suspect that's a little faster than the average time frame.

I don't want to say it was easy, because that takes away from the incredibly hard work everyone has done up to this point, but perhaps lucky - right script, right people, right time. I just reached out to some friends and they trusted me enough to help me take it to the next step. It's been the perfect lesson in what can happen when you ask someone for help. Be warned: they might say 'Yes'!

Lipstick is at the Southwark Playhouse until 28 March

Photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli

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