Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System offers unprecedented access to international theatre and performance practice in carceral contexts and the material and political conditions that shape this work. Each of the twelve essays and interviews by international practitioners and scholars reveal a panoply of practice: from cross-arts projects shaped by autobiographical narratives through to fantasy-informed cabaret; from radio plays to film; from popular participatory performance to work staged in commercial theatres. Extracts of performance texts, developed with Clean Break theatre company, are interwoven through the collection.
Television and film images of women in prison are repeatedly painted from a limited palette of stereotypes – ‘bad girls’, ‘monsters’, ‘babes behind bars’. To attend to theatre with and about women with experience of the criminal justice system is to attend to intersectional injustices that shape women’s criminalization and the personal and political implications of this. The theatre and performance practices in this collection disrupt, expand and reframe representational vocabularies of criminalized women for audiences within and beyond prison walls. They expose the role of incarceration as a mechanism of state punishment, the impact of neoliberalism on ideologies of punishment and the inequalities and violence that shape the lives of many incarcerated women. In a context where criminalized women are often dismissed as unreliable or untrustworthy, the collection engages with theatre practices which facilitate an economy of credibility, where women with experience of the criminal justice system are represented as expert witnesses.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Wicked (1991) by Bryony Lavery 1. Interplay: Tracing Personal and Political Transformation Through Popular Participatory Theatre in Westville Female Correctional Centre, Durban South Africa – Miranda Young-Jahangeer (University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa). ‘Four Walls’, Voices from Prison (1987), by Lynn 2. ‘They Pink Dress Ain’t Done Shit’: Performing Black Quare Activism at a Women’s Gulf Coast Prison – Lisa L. Biggs (Brown University, USA) Decade (1984) by Jacqueline Holborough 3. Daughters of the Floating Brothel: Engaging Indigenous Australian women prisoners through participatory radio drama - Sarah Woodland (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre Griffith University, Australia) ‘I am a theatre’, Voices from Prison (1987), by Abigail 4. What Works: The Affective and Gendered Performance of Prison - Aylwyn Walsh (University of Leeds, UK) Inside Bitch (2019) – Extract I - conceived by Stacey Gregg and Deborah Pearson, devised with Lucy Edkins, Jennifer Joseph, TerriAnn Oudjar and Jade Small 5. Possible Fictions: Split Britches, Biography and Fantasy with Women in Prison - Caoimhe McAvinchey (Queen Mary University of London, UK) Killers (1980) – Extract I - by Jacqueline Holborough 6. Theatre as Collective Casework: Clean Break Theatre Company’s Charged (2010) - Molly McPhee (University of Melbourne, Australia) ‘Prison Loves, Prison Hates’, Voices from Prison (1987), by Bonni 7. Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company: The Arts: Unapologetically Transcendent – Maud Clark AM (Director, Australia) Killers (1980) – Extract II - by Jacqueline Holborough 8. The Meeting Place: Collaborative Learning in a University-Prison Partnership - Rachel Conlon (York St. John University, UK) Inside Bitch (2019) – Extract II - conceived by Stacey Gregg and Deborah Pearson, devised with Lucy Edkins, Jennifer Joseph, TerriAnn Oudjar and Jade Small 9. Acting Out: And Interview with Sherrin Fitzer by Ashley Lucas (University of Michigan, USA) Inside a Cloud (2016) by Sabrina Mahfouz 10. ‘There is Still Life in me, Despite What I Have Done’ – Assuaging Woundedness Through Collective Creativity – Katharine Low (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, UK) and Clara Vaughan (Market Theatre Laboratory, South Africa) ‘Dirty Rule Makers’, Voices from Prison (1987), by Lynn 11. The Stella Adler Studio Outreach Programme at the Rose M. Singer Centre for Women at Rikers Island Correctional Facility. Interview with Joanne Edelmann and Tom Oppenheim by Caoimhe McAvinchey (Queen Mary University of London, UK) 21.23.6.15 (2018) by Sandrine Uwayo. 12. In Their Shoes: Participation, Social Change and Empathy in Open Clasp’s Key Change – Kay Hepplewhite (Northumbria University, UK) Index
Caoimhe McAvinchey is Professor of Socially Engaged and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
