TEN Years Ago…Kayos Youth Theatre Staged Gregory’s Girl

PERFORMERS from Kayos Youth Theatre put on a production of coming-of-age 1980s comedy Gregory’s Girl at Greenock Arts Guild in October 2008.

The group also asked Greenock writer Danny McCahon to see if he had a one-act play they could feature. He wrote a behind-the-scenes dramatisation based on the process of Kayos staging Gregory’s Girl.

Danny, who wrote scripts for BBC TV’s Casualty for five years and has also written for TV shows Waterloo Road and River City, said at the time: “I waited till Gregory’s Girl was cast and decided to write a play with parts for everybody else. I had a chat with each individually and talked about what they were into, what kind of part they would want to play. Some wanted to be funny; some didn’t; some liked dancing; some liked singing.

Danny, whose daughter Anna was in Kayos, added: “I settled on the idea of a play about the process of staging Gregory’s Girl. It starts from the curtain going down at the last show by Kayos, West Side Story.”

The play looked at the process of staging an amateur production including choosing what play to do, the auditions, back-stage preparations and rehearsal.

It was called No Chicks, No Penguins in a reference to two memorable aspects of the Gregory’s Girl film that are not in the stage version but made for an amusing episode in Danny’s play.