‘Not Your Princess’ - Alternative Cinderella gets ready for the ball
Molly Geddes is to play Cinderella in an alternative twist on the Christmas show
This will be no classic fairytale this Christmas.
Actor Molly Geddes, who has championed the rights of women and girls alongside her stage career after experiencing an abusive relationship as a teenager, is to play an “alternative” Cinderella in a new show.
Ms Geddes, who will perform at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre this year, says her version of Cinderella is “very different” to the traditional rags to riches princess portrayed in the fairytale. The character is described as independent and feisty and wears t-shirts with slogans including “This Girl Can” and “Not Your Princess.
She said: “She’s a very different kind of Cinderella. I don’t think I ever saw myself as being a princess, but saw this Cinderella and I thought ‘oh my goodness, that’s me all over’. It’s really exciting. It’s got all of the parts of the Cinderella story that we all know and love, but it’s a version which really celebrates courage and kindness and bravery. It’s just so nice to be doing something where the character has agency over how her story ends. I’m buzzing to do that for all of the young girls who come and see the show.”
Ms Geddes, who graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, is involved in Glasgow Girls Club and various other organisations helping women and girls and is a passionate advocate for women’s rights. A volunteer with the club since she was 14, she now works there as a community artist alongside her acting work.
She added: “Something that I’m particularly excited about with this production is being able to carry that part of myself - these passions and what I do - on stage. Cinderella is a great example of showing you can be courageous and also kind, that these things can go hand in hand.”
Three years ago, she created a campaign called Where We Stop, in conjunction with the Glasgow Girls Club and the Carter Centre in the US in the form of a six-minute short film, which explores themes of domestic abuse, relationship coercion, and unhealthy dynamics. She wrote the film from her own experience, as well as through a series of focus groups and script writing workshops with girls and young women from across Glasgow.
Ms Geddes said: “I’m a former member of the club and I’ve always been involved in feminist, activist-type stuff, specifically looking at violence against women and girls. It’s a film inspired by my own experience of being in an abusive relationship when I was younger.
“After I got out of that relationship, I got back in touch with the Glasgow Girls’ Club and I saw a real lack of media around the issue that spoke to young women. Everything I was looking at for answers for my own experience were looking at older woman or married women and there wasn’t anything that really spoke to me. So I said, ‘we have to do something about this’.”
Directed by Joanna Bowman and written by Stuart Paterson, the show, which runs from 28 November to 31 December, also stars Claire Dargo, who is known as Gloria Bell in The Ridge and Karen Connolly in River City.
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