When the pre-West End tour of Spitfire Girls opens at Lighthouse in January, it will mark a full circle moment for Bournemouth-based actor writer producer Katherine Senior, who began her theatrical adventure here as a teenage technician, as she recalls in this special blog...
2027 is my twentieth year of touring theatre around the country and it feels a little bonkers that after all these years of working as an actor and running a theatre company, that my play, this little creation that started as an idea, one that I couldn’t imagine that I’d even achieve, has played to over 40,000 people on two national tours.
They say things come in threes, and with Spitfire Girls that’s the case. As well as working as a techie at the Lighthouse when I was 19 – I recall the ‘get in’ never paid that well but the ‘get out’ always did, so made it worth heading in on my motorbike to start work at 10pm! – I also developed the kernel of the idea for Spitfire Girls here in 2022. So it feels like a full circle to open the play at my local, Lighthouse, before it heads to Chichester Minerva Theatre for a sold out run and then transferring to London’s Park Theatre and Off-Broadway in New York!
I didn’t know I could even write a play before I started this. I just had a story and a little bit of an itch that something was worth telling and, perhaps, if I dug around a little, both in the subject matter and myself, I could create some characters that might hold some truth to them and write them into relationships that people would recognise.
I first encountered the women who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary in 2016. I heard on the radio, as a side comment, that women flew aeroplanes during WW2 and I was blown away that I knew nothing about it. Was it my ignorance? or was it ever so slightly hidden from history?
I wanted to know more so began to reach out to families and experts on the subject to gather the stories behind these inspiring women. It’s been an extraordinary adventure meeting the real-life pilots and their families; I met Candy Adkins in 2016 and she showed me her mother, ATA First Officer Jackie Moggridge’s, immense archive over a delicious bowl of soup!
Then, in 2017, I had the utmost privilege to share a cup of tea with First Officer Mary Ellis at her home on the Isle of Wight just ten months before she sadly passed away. I had my six-month-old boy in tow and he sat on her lap as she chatted to us. It was a privilege and honour to meet her.
Of course, I was interested in gathering the stats and facts, and I enjoyed adding those details to the piece, but I was more intrigued by her stories of friendship and camaraderie. Because what are we without those things? There are enough books and papers out there that can give us the historical facts, but I am a storyteller, and I believe we need to tell stories with a beating heart at the centre of it. Our job is to zoom in on the humanity behind the history, otherwise we may as well watch a documentary.
Since premiering the play in 2025 I have met even more people at stage door that are deeply connected to these women; daughters, sons, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, all of whom are immensely grateful that their legacy lives on. Equally, the fact that so many people, young and old, are discovering these women and their stories for the first time through this play feels incredibly valuable.
Since the play became available for amateur licensing there are now many amateur productions happening across the UK, and the world, which means this part of history will live on through those communities.
I can’t deny the fact that the opportunity to create flight on stage wasn’t a big part of my idea. This was, theatrically, hugely exciting for me; to create the feeling of flying. In the summer of 2024, I was offered an incredible opportunity to develop this idea at the National Theatre Studio as part of their Generate Programme, and through their support and amazing facilities, our creative team started to make those discoveries through movement and began to believe that this play… might… just… work.
People have said to me that this is a great story to inspire young girls today, which I hope it is, but my three young children are boys. All born during this project. I like to think that it will inspire them too. Perhaps, in a tiny way, it will contribute to a shift – one where boys can be inspired by women too; women who were smashing down barriers nearly 90 years ago. They were not only defying stereotypes but standing up to the very ideologies we, sadly, find ourselves still battling today. I think that’s awesome. I hope you do too and that maybe this play will poke at your heart a little.
:: Spitfire Girls is at Lighthouse on Friday 16 and Saturday 16 January. Tickets available now at https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/event/spitfire-girls/ and on 01202 280000.
