When I received an email that ABC were producing a pilot an all-girls selective school asking me to audition, my heart sped up. For years we have seen Australian private and public schools represented on screen with huge success in Ja’ime or Heartbreak High. Despite loving these shows, I always felt distant from their experiences. I went to an all-girls selective high school in Sydney where the culture, demographic and friendships focused on studying hard, the next achievement and making our parents proud.
Children in primary school were sent to years of tutoring to earn a place in one of these schools, where the grind would continue until the day you receive your all-consuming ATAR and huddle around a laptop to see if your school had maintained their spot in the top 10. At the same time, mainstream media pursued narratives of ‘tiger parents’, overworked and miserable students, an immigrant takeover and unbalanced learning.
Urvi Majumdar and Nina Oyama have created a TV comedy which aims to represent what it’s really like to go to a selective school in all its complexity. Set in 2010, Urvi (Urvi Majumdar) wants to be a famous actress, but her parents would prefer she becomes a doctor. It doesn’t help when her little sister Maya (played by myself – Isha Desai) is accelerated into Year 11, the same grade as Urvi and excels in her studies. Urvi auditions for the school musical to follow her dreams, and hopefully get Hot Ryan to like her. In the era of So Fresh CDs and MySpace, this show is about finding who you are and going after what you want.
In reality, my high school experience was nuanced. My singular focus for Year 11 and 12 was getting good marks, so I could achieve a standard I had set and be proud of myself. But I also made lifelong friendships and developed a strong work ethic that I’ve relied on for all my ventures as an adult, even acting. Talking to Urvi and Nina, two former selective schoolgirls themselves, I realised that this environment has lacked real representation in Australian entertainment. This has resulted in stereotypes overtaking conversations about the benefits and shortcomings of going to a selective school, as you would have with any other school.
Walking onto set and donning the uniform for the first time, I felt an eerie sense of déjà vu. The anxieties and amusements of my high school years came flooding back, this time with the gift of perspective. I was able to see how much I had grown in the four years that had passed, how my sheltered and narrow view of the world had expanded to appreciate my failures as lessons and rejection as redirection instead of cataclysmic life-ending events.
One of the trademarks of going to a selective school is the large portion of East Asian and South Asian students, and the team behind Urvi Went to An All Girls School was an accurate and refreshing representation of that. From cast to crew, people of colour and people that looked like me were acting, directing, doing hair and make-up and assisting with camera operations. In the green room, we would exchange stories about our time at school and equally hilarious, yet shocking anecdotes about our experiences in the industry.
This is a good time to mention that I was definitely the least funny person in the room, and so grateful for it. What makes this show special is not only the story at the heart of it, but the excellence in comedic talent that came together to create it. With Nina and Urvi at the helm, the cast comprised of Sashi Perera, Amy Louise Ruffle, Karis Oka, Ruby Teys, Charissa Bossinakis, Josh Burton…the list is truly endless. Every day we would step onto set with our script, only for this group of stand-up comedians and actors to play, improvise and raise the bar of what each scene can be. Not only was it my first foray into television, but a masterclass in comedy.
When writing this piece, I wanted to ask Urvi how and why she developed this show. She said:
“In the first few years of practising stand up, I found that many of my routines included stories from my school years, perhaps because my memory of those times are so heightened. I found old diaries I kept throughout my teens and was inspired to write my first stand-up hour by the same title. When touring this show, I realised that the hyper specific stories of going to an all-girls school and growing up with my Indian family were ones that people could relate to across different states in Australia.
“When the ABC and Screen Australia Freshblood 3 funding round opened in early 2023, I decided I wanted to pitch the show as a webseries and for the writing to represent a multitude of South Asian experiences which is how I gathered our writing team- Sashi Perera, Rohan Ganju and Suren Jayemanne. I spoke to Nina Oyama at the time to get advice on how to apply and could tell early on that her wisdom, humour and specialist expertise would be hugely beneficial to the project. When we discovered that we both went to similar schools, the union seemed fateful. The development and production of our web series and then our 30-minute pilot has been one of the best experiences of my career.
“I remember my time at school very distinctly. I excelled academically for two years and then kind of crashed and burned for the final two (pretty annoying for my parents that the sequence wasn’t reversed). Creating this show has been cathartic- now I’m glad I was unhinged for all the stories. Most of all it’s deeply satisfying to know that little me in early high school, dreaming of one day making a TV show, would be really proud.“
I graduated high school in 2019, and despite Urvi’s script being set in 2010, I was surprised at how much I related to her story. Despite the well-meaning influences in my life, I felt stifled and underwhelmed by the perceived lack of choices for a career. I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew what I didn’t want to do. On an early morning car ride with Urvi, I realised that her journey of moving towards her passions and growing them into a multi-faceted career is what I had been subconsciously emulating for the past few years. When we finished shooting the pilot, I left feeling grateful for the sense of community I had found, and felt emboldened that there was space for artists and stories like ours to have a platform.
As is the case with reductive stereotypes, selective school students have often been viewed as a monolith. But this show provides the opportunity for the audience to follow different character journeys within this environment. My character, Maya, studies ferociously and does want to pursue medicine after school. On the other hand, Urvi strives to be an artist, using her spare time to practise monologues in her room. Sara (Sashi Perera) and Urvi share a boy crazy fever, desperate to get some one-on-one time with the loves of their lives (aka the boys from Grogan Boys High). Whilst Angel (Karis Oka), Tegan (Ruby Teys) and Pu (Charissa Bossinakis) are committed to being popular and tearing down anyone who gets in their way, whatever it takes.
I hope that a show like this can broaden the perception of selective schools to the wider community, and I know that high school Isha would be so proud of her part in this pioneering representation on screen.
Urvi Went to An All Girls School airs on at 9pm on April 9th on ABC and ABC iview.
Isha Desai is an actor and writer. She has worked across stage and screen and plays Maya Mukherjee in Urvi Went to an All Girls School.
Top photo source: Supplied/ABC
