Lifers – Southwark Playhouse Borough
As part of my drama degree in late ‘90s Liverpool, we were required to complete a Theatre In Education project (TIE). The aim was to bring live performance to a civic space where such larks are rare or unlikely. Stage a grime-infused Macbeth at an inner-city school. Perform avant garde ballet in a local authority funded care home. That type of thing.
Together with my crew of fellow misfits on my course, we opted to bring our theatrical talents to the most captive of audiences, prison inmates. The concept shattered when faced with the complex, frustrating and brutal reality of staging anything in a prison. Simply visiting an inmate at a UK correctional facility is never less than a bureaucratic, dystopian terror trip. Do-gooding, weed-fuelled drama students are likely fall hard at the fi...