Black Swan State Theatre Company presents Never Have I Ever by Deborah Frances-White at Heath Ledger Theatre

It is impossible to foresee a time Deborah Frances-White will ever run out of topics to talk and write about, given the current state of the world in which we are living. The Guilty Feminist podcast creator and author’s latest book Six Conversations We’re Scared To Have delves into our polarised society and the fraught nature of certain conversations. “It’s also about why progressive people are so fractured and there’s so much divisiveness, where ‘you’ve said the wrong word’ or ‘you’ve done the wrong thing’ or ‘you’re the wrong kind of feminist’,” British-Australian Frances-White explains to STM from her home in London. “It’s about how we’re interacting. People say there’s a lack of empathy on the internet, and that it’s all keyboard warriors, but I’m arguing that actually, every single day, social media demands that we become more and more empathetic to fewer and fewer people. “I’m looking at why that is, then filtering it through different conversations, about freedom of speech in comedy, cancel culture, our relationship with the past and gender non-conformity that’s just become such a divisive and flammable topic . . . I’ve been doing a book tour and having lots of engaged conversations about how we can find our way back to each other.” Frances-White dedicated her new book release to the least divisive person she has had the pleasure of knowing, beloved comedian Cal Wilson. Before Wilson died in 2023 from a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the New Zealand-born, Melbourne girl at heart had been a regular co-host on The Guilty Feminist whenever Frances-White toured her live recording shows to Wilson’s birth and adopted countries. “To have lost Cal, I’m just so grateful I spent so much time with her on those tours,” Frances-White says. “Getting to spend time on stage with her feels like such a massive privilege. It was just an absolute joy, as it is with all my incredible guests and other co-hosts like Celia Pacquola and Geraldine Hickey. “The thing I love most about The Guilty Feminist is getting to be with an audience where we are all in on the joke, and we pretty much share the same values. There’s something wonderful about that.” Having surpassed more than 100 million downloads, the feminist comedy podcast’s origin story dates back to the end of 2015, spring-boarding off the back of her BBC Radio 4 series Deborah Frances-White Rolls The Dice. It was a time where she had started to notice conversations with her girlfriends over lunch had changed from personal talk about their love lives and careers to outrage at more global affairs, which only bubbled up higher nearing the #MeToo movement and Donald Trump’s first presidential term. She describes The Guilty Feminist podcast as a show about our noble goals as 21st century feminists, and our hypocrisies and insecurity which undermine those goals. It is also about not having to be perfect to be a meaningful force for change in the world. “I think it hit the zeitgeist,” she says when asked about the podcast’s popularity. “Often, we think, ‘well, I’m just a drop in the ocean’ but the ocean is just made out of millions of drops. Even 1000 drops can make a wave. So, I feel like what the podcast has done is allow people to go, ‘I too can have a go and make a contribution if I come together with other people’.” Honesty has forever been at the forefront for her, whether it be in the form of podcast, book or stand-up. Shows in her comedy career have ranged in topics from the Queensland-raised Frances-White’s family converting to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was a teenager (Cult Following, 2012) to being adopted and tracking down her biological family (Half A Can Of Worms, 2013). She is an advocate for more honesty in the world, especially emotional honesty, until the moments when she meets someone and realises they know a lot more about her than she does them. “Because you forget . . . to do a podcast all year, you end up saying all sorts of things that you don’t mean to say,” she muses. Frances-White headed to the UK in her early 20s with $2000 in her possession and the ambition of getting a working holiday visa, and while she still calls Australia home, visiting regularly, has been based in Britain ever since. She had always longed to live in London, having imbued it with a Narnia-like quality inspired by all the storybooks she had read as a child. The move resulted in her studying an undergraduate degree in English at Harris Manchester College at The University of Oxford. A love for theatresports during her formative years in Australia encouraged Frances-White to start performing comedy improvisation, where she eventually realised her favourite part was talking to the audience during the warm-up. “I thought ‘I’m more interested in this audience and talking to this audience than I am in pretending to be other people. I think I’m a stand-up’,” she recounts. “I took an hour of stand-up comedy, just having done some previews, up to Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2007) and that’s how I started. I didn’t really know that’s not what people did, that they do the circuit. “My first show went fine, it was OK, but my second show immediately got a producer and a tour. That show (How To Get Almost Anyone To Want To Sleep With You) got brought to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (2008), and that was amazing. We went on to Adelaide and then I was kind of away.” Frances-White penned her first scripted theatre effort during her second year of university, successfully entering the play in the Cameron Mackintosh new writing festival, resulting in it being produced at Oxford’s Burton Taylor Studio. It gave her the confidence to write more over the years from screenplays to TV pilots, where she learnt Hollywood interest does not necessarily mean it is going to get made. A play about four friends sitting in a restaurant after closing had been ruminating in her mind when emerging director at London’s Almeida Theatre, and The Guilty Feminist fan, Emma Butler approached Frances-White with funding to develop a piece of new writing. “She’d heard me talk about my writing on the podcast, but I had to tell her it was just an idea, that it wasn’t really written, but it could be written by the time she needed,” Frances-White says. “I have ADHD so it means I do too many things . . . if I don’t have a deadline, I might never finish that play, but if you tell me you need it by Monday morning, it will be done, because the adrenaline will kick in. The best way for me to get things done is embarrassing deadlines. I knew there’d be a rehearsal room with actors and a director waiting.” The result was Frances-White’s first major work for the stage Never Have I Ever, which premiered at the UK’s Chichester Festival Theatre in 2023 before an Australian premiere with Melbourne Theatre Company in February this year. Black Swan State Theatre Company is next to stage Never Have I Ever with director Kate Champion, while there are talks of a West End season as the play is currently being translated into German, and Portuguese for a Brazil theatre company. Australia-bound, Frances-White is relishing her chance to be in the rehearsal room prior to opening night, with Champion and the diverse Perth cast featuring Emily Rose Brennan as Jacq, Deep Sroa as Kas, Will O’Mahony as Tobin and Ratidzo Mambo as Adaego. Having all attended university together, these two heteronormative couples are having one last dinner at Jacq and Kas’ boutique restaurant, in which Tobin is an investor, as they build up to tell Tobin and Adaego about it being on the brink of bankruptcy. “The kind of initial proposition on the table in this play is sort of money and friendship, but it’s called Never Have I Ever because you know how you sometimes regress when you see your student friends, your school friends, your uni friends, or your first job friends?” Frances-White poses. “You can regress to being that age somehow. They start playing a drinking game called Never Have I Ever where you confess things that you haven’t done just by taking a drink. Of course, the more you drink, the less guarded you become, and the more you’re likely to confess accidentally by having a drink. “The game always causes trouble so it’s a lovely, dramatic proposition of hidden secrets between old friends, what comes out and how it impacts their relationships.” Hilarious and highly entertaining, with political and social conflict, big themes, questions and twists, Never Have I Ever has a huge moral dilemma at its heart. “It’s not one of those plays where people just sit and talk about stuff, there’s a lot of machinations in it,” she adds. “It’s really interesting seeing what Australians make of it because it is quite British. Sometimes it’s easier to see other people’s foibles from a distance, but then that makes us look back at ourselves. “Because I’m a British-Australian playwright, I feel like I do understand both cultures very well. I’ve got a sense of both countries, and I feel like it’s really interesting and it does translate. But it also gives the Australians a little room to parody the Brits, which is really nice. It makes for a slightly different play. “I’m really interested to see what Kate Champion does with it.” Never Have I Ever is at Heath Ledger Theatre, June 14 to July 6. Tickets at blackswantheatre.com.au.

Black Swan State Theatre Company presents Never Have I Ever by Deborah Frances-White at Heath Ledger Theatre

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