The Ugly Girl

A wildly comic twist on the stereotype of a queer, disabled, intellectual trouble-maker. This new play is full of slapstick, music and dark humour.

An international cast of disabled actresses will perform this no-holds barred musical inquiry about what it means to be the quintessential Ugly Girl adrift in a comically hostile universe.

The psychotic surreal musical is played out by a dysfunctional family in front of the corpse of their dead mother. Including a comic mix of melodrama, Punch and Judy, vaudeville and English music hall.

Writer and performer Terry Galloway, deaf since nine, recently received a cochlear implant. The first minutes after implant all she could hear was a frightening cacophony: “It made me want to tear my head off. I was terrified until my audiologist picked up a child’s toy—a bell, that when she rang it, made a piercingly joyful trill.

My brain seemed to turn around in my skull and fasten on that sound. And when it did, I came to two realisations: I was going to love hearing; and I was going to write a musical.” And so she has.