Pippa Glanville reviews and summarises the whole experience as follows:-

When I originally wrote City Girl, I never expected it to become the H.C.S lower school play! At one stage, it was just a bit of fun, something for my school friends and I to do in the space left after Bugsy Malone, the Junior School’s latest production at the time. As most people know, there arena’t very many girl parts in Bugsy Malone, and there will always be major competition for the two main characters, Tallulah and Blousey.  A lot of my friends were extremely disappointed they hadn’t got the parts they had wished for (unfortunately the parts nearly every girl had wished for) and were talking about how they had always wanted to have a go at playing an even-ever-so-slightly-important-character in a play.

So I brought up the idea of writing a play that we could put on ourselves.

Everybody thought that it seemed to be a good idea, as long as each one of them got the sort of part each of them had always wished for- someone glamorous, someone funny, someone sinister … the list went on and on. There I was, with a sudden avalanche of characters, and only a few rough ideas for the actual storyline. I set about writing. I got a few “scenes” down, and brought them into school the next day. My friends liked it, and eagerly started practicing. By the summer half-term 2006 (I started writing just before the Easter holidays in the same year), “City Girl” was two thirds written. (Though if all the time was put together, it probably took just under a month.) The story plot was basically this:

Hannah Valerie is your average American girl, who lives with her Mother, Father and sister Clarissa at Giswilt farm. Hannah’s future appears to be with her family and the cows, but she has other ideas. Hannah has always dreamed of going to Chicago and becoming a show-girl- but her parents do not approve. One night, with the help of Clarissa, Hannah escapes to find her dreams. At first everything goes according to plan. Hannah pals up with Sukie, a fashionista who performs at “Rita’s’ Ritz”, the local show-house, who helps her to find a job. But on the night of her first performance, Hannah gets lost in Chicago. She falls across a bunch of street-kids, who happen to have musical talent. They have no chance of being able to show it, for they are trapped in poverty and street crime. But Hannah thinks the easiest way to get them some money is to use this talent in a competition, which they enter and surprisingly win.  

But, as most things like this do, the novelty wore off. The actors were losing their original enthusiasm (which was completely understandable, as it was fast approaching the holidays with our very first term at Senior school at the other end, and we were all tired), we couldn’t fix a date, I couldn’t find a way to finish the play that everyone agreed with, I was also having difficulty writing down the music I had made up, as my music theory was, and still is not, up to scratch (at least certainly not enough to write full pieces of music down-correctly). Also if we did put it on then we couldn’t think of a venue.

So City Girl lay dormant, throughout the summer holidays, seeming to be completely forgotten.

Though, halfway through our first term at HCS, the idea returned. Everyone who had been included before thought we could give it another chance. I collected the old scripts, was given some more time to re-write them, and continued from where we left off.
Very soon I started to feel quite worn out with the whole thing. I needed proper help to get the whole show going, and I just couldn’t do everything myself. I also needed permission to do the play from a school teacher, in case it clashed with anything else. My friend Hannah (who had agreed to help me put my music onto paper) and I went down on a Friday to meet Mrs. Zammit. She seemed to be very interested.

“Well,” she said, “Mr. Moore and I have not decided on a lower school play yet. How about if we made it City Girl?”
This was completely unexpected, and I was thrilled. After talking to Mrs. Zammit, I had found out that we would be doing the performance in the Powell Theatre, it would be on for three nights, Mrs. Zammit would be directing, and Mr. Moore would be helping me write out the music, therefore taking the weight off Hannah’s hands. Although the play was going to be re-cast, it was like a dream come true! The auditions started around spring time. I came along to most of them. One of the earliest weird experiences I had with the show was watching the auditions- seeing people reading out the words you have written and acting the characters you created is both scary and exciting.

Even more exciting was a couple of weeks later, when I saw the final cast list. The first rehearsal was almost immediately after the cast list appeared. It was in the first rehearsal I started to realise how complicated I had made the staging. The scenes were all over the place- one minute there was a train station scene, then a spooky alleyway, then a family home, then a sophisticated apartment… Mrs. Zammit was quite worried. So that cut out any detailed scenery ideas! Another dilemma was the fact that City Girl was set in America. Hence, when American accents. Which not many of the actors were comfortable with.
The final problem was that there was only about a month and a bit until we were supposed to be performing.

Rehearsals became extremely stressful, and rather embarrassing for me, particularly when we were practicing a certain song-of-which-will-not-be-named, which most boy actors found absolutely hilarious. I had to laugh along with it- though that was quite hard. Even though it was just a silly song, when you have written a play you become very close to your work… so when someone makes fun of it, it hurts. Scenes were cut. Mr. Moore and I had to alter songs from their original format. Though they were equally minor things, I was getting more and more nervous that the whole thing was not going to work after all.
The day of the first night was nerve racking. I could hardly concentrate on any of my lessons at all. My friend Becky didn’t know what the heck I was worrying about. “It’s fine” I remember her saying. “It’s just the fact that half of us don’t know our words, the boys can’t be bothered to sing, and I don’t think we’re having costumes…”

Great
.
It also appeared Mrs. Zammit had been thinking the same about the short space of time the characters had had to practice and therefore the effect on the performance, as she described it on the programme as “a workshop” instead of a full show.
I had been planning to stay back-stage on all of the nights, but on that Tuesday Mrs. Zammit and I didn’t think it such a good idea. So I stayed and watched in the audience. It was nothing like I had imagined. The acting was brilliant, the singing was wonderful,  the dancing was fantastic, and we did have costumes after all.  I was completely over-joyed.

There was a fairly small audience on the first night, but on the second night we had to bring out extra chairs so everyone could fit in! I decided to stay backstage that time. But the minute I was backstage, I suddenly realised that in the audience you don’t notice the havoc that is constantly going on behind the curtains! The final night, as expected, was the best. The Powell Theatre was packed to burst! Back stage was much less manic than usual, thanks to some firm help from Miss Sage, who kept all of us just about shut up, so, unlike the other nights, there was no furious mutterings from behind the curtain.

The finale was both happy and sad. None of us wanted the show to end. We presented some flowers to Mr. Moore and Mrs. Zammit, and I was unexpectedly presented with some flowers too!

I would like to thank so many people- Mr. Moore and Liam Dunachie for helping me put the music onto paper and for being so patient, Mrs. Zammit for actually putting the thing on, and being AMAZINGLY patient for waiting for the typing to come, Becky, Caroline, Theo, Nic and the cast for simply being wonderful friends and wonderful actors, Mr. Petrie and Mrs. Wooderson for being there.

It has been the best experience EVER!