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Friday, October 10, 2008, 10:30
"I'd spend the whole day there from 10.30am to 7pm. It was a daytime drop-in parlour. That was part of its charm. It wasn't one of those seedy places. It was rollies and sherries – no-one had a drug habit. One of their regular clients was a policeman, and he knew there were no drugs or illegal immigrants."
Rather than write a script that performers act, Alecky creates verbatim theatre. The words are recorded, edited and played through earphones to actresses who then speak them.
"It is not done as a script, so they don't fall into their own speech pattern," she says. "This way they are copying not just the words but the rhythm and the intonation."
The Girlfriend Experience is set in Bournemouth, although the actual location is another seaside town.
"The story of their own personal lives and work was the backdrop," Alecky says. "The third week I visited I found one had broken the golden rule that you never go out with a punter."
Because of their age, in their 40s and 50s, Alecky says they were looking to their later years and not wanting to be on their own. "Three of the four women were single and I caught them at a time in their lives when they were going into relationships. So that became the narrative."
After reading blogs on the Internet, Alecky made contact with an older woman who didn't match the idea of a stereotypical prostitute.
"I met her and she told me she worked in a parlour – that opened up a lot of doors for me."
The women gave full access and the material was a combination of interviews and recorded chat edited down from 100 hours to 90 minutes.
"It was a privilege sitting in the parlour where they hang out between bookings, and that's the feeling I want the audience to have. They accepted me. They are all working for financial reasons. It is like a co-operative," says Alecky.
"The women like working there for the support and comfort they get from each other. The first part of the play seems quite jolly, but it does get sadder because there are a couple of unpleasant clients. It is bittersweet."
The trust she built up with the women is something she feels would have been harder for a male writer. "They were comfortable with me, and didn't feel threatened. It was a sitting room, which is a female environment, and being female gave me access.
"It was their character and something about the warmth of these women that I really liked. I liked the respect they gave to each other.
"They weren't blowing the money on a bag of cocaine. They were earning to help themselves to live day to day, or pay for their children or their dependent parents. They were women who weren't doing it selfishly."
The women were invited to the premiere at the Royal Court. Only one took up the offer, but Alecky said she was "very happy" with the production.
Alecky wrote her first play, the award-winning Come Out Eli, in 2003 and has not looked back since. "What I do is quite a niche," she says. "I'm not conscious of being a woman playwright and it being more difficult.
"But I am more aware that I do verbatim theatre, and I realise that although it has been quite fashionable over the past few years it might not always be."
She has done similar work for TV, and is now working on a National Theatre commission – about which the normally forthcoming Alecky coyly says: "It's a secret!"
The Girlfriend Experience is at The Drum from October 16 to November 1. Tickets: 01752 267222
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The Girlfriend Experience comes to Plymouth next week. Inset – Alecky Blythe
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