Last night I was brought to tears, meeting the awe-inspiring Glasgow Girls and hearing their story.
During the evening Cora Bissett took the audience through her vision for her upcoming musical, The Glasgow Girls, presenting extracts and songs from the piece which she is evidently passionate about.
They’ve got another performance tonight and I would urge you all to get yourself a ticket!
The Glasgow Girls, an inspiration
Glasgow Girls the musical is inspired by the story of seven teenage girls who recognise an injustice and decide to take on the system when their friend Agnessa becomes a victim of dawn raids, taken from her home with her family in the early hours of the morning to a detention centre.
Glasgow Girls is a story of genuine friendship without barriers and knows no boundaries – it is beautiful and a true inspiration.
The Glasgow Girls also tells the story of two other amazing characters – Noreen and Jean. Two ‘Glaswegian grannies’ who have been giving the Government and the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) ‘what for’ since they decided to target children and families on their territory.
These two inspirational women actively campaign against dawn raids and deportations with tactics up to and including patrolling their estate at 4:00 am on the hunt for immigration vans arriving to target families in their beds!
The real Glasgow Girls
The story was portrayed through the words of Cora, clips of the 2005 documentary ‘The Glasgow Girls’ and amazing songs performed by their talented writers MC Soom T and Patricia Panther. One Song, ‘At it’ by Patricia Panther, stood out represents the mindset of UKBA officers and the culture of disbelief.
Afterwards we were introduced to some of the real Glasgow Girls – I hope Cora has someone feisty in mind to take on the role of Noreen to do her inspirational personality justice.
Community spirit
Spirit is Refugee Week 2012’s theme and the Glasgow Girls has it by the bucket load. Cora describes it as a love story to Glasgow.
Glasgow showed its welcoming and uplifting spirit again on Saturday with a 500 strong pro-refugee march chanting “Asylum seekers welcome here!” in protest of recent dawn raids and destitution facing our refugee and asylum seeker communities.
If this sneak preview is anything to go by the musical is going to be MASSIVE and I will be first in line for tickets when the full performance makes its stage debut at the Citizens Theatre at the end of October!
