a series of sculptural interventions to respond to the 40th anniversary of Clean Break Theatre Company: the pioneering theatre company working with women with lived experience of the criminal justice system, challenging stigma and transforming lives through socially engaged theatre making since 1979.
This commission was installed in a decommissioned prison van, and tours the UK together with Chloe Moss’ play Sweatbox which is performed in the van to an audience of 12. The larger archive is on display at the Bishopsgate Institute in London.
I installed a neon sign ‘hope’ into one of the cells and audience were invited to sit in the cell and listen to poetry created by Clean Break members while immersed in the neon lit space. After consulting members past and present, the work that most clearly represented the work that Clean Break did for them was hope.
In creating space for the audience within the prison van, the fourth cell was removed, leaving traces of its existence on the fabric of the ceiling and the floor. Along these lines, I created wall hangings from printed archive material, hand coloured on transparent paper, to trace the her story of Clean Break from its beginnings in Ashkham Grange Prison in 1979.
Researching the archive, we came across a complete set of letters between Jaqueline Holbroke and Susan McCormick, the visionary governor of Ashkham Grange Prison who in 1979 encouraged Jenni and Jaqui in their first productions and remained a strong supporter and advocate of Clean Break’s work until she died. I display these letters in an adapted file so the letters interconnect and can be read simultaneously.
On entering the van for the first time I was struck by careful visible names of women etched into the windows and walls of the van. I created this installation using graffiti to celebrate all the women playwrights who have been commissioned by Clean Break since 1979. It reads as a canon of the bravest, most daring and most influential theatre wordsmiths of recent times. Inscribing the fabric of the van with these transformative women names seemed to evoke the powerful work that Clean Break does internally with the members and audiences with whom it engages.
The van was full of warning texts representing the securitisation of the environment. I created a series of small interventions subverting this language and invoking the spirit of Clean Break’s interventions.