Caoimhe McAvinchey – författare

Theatre and Prison investigates how theatre-makers stage critical questions about the use of prison in society. Using examples from popular culture, dramatic texts and applied theatre it analyses how theatre and performance reveals economies of punishment, affects penal reform and both challenges and participates in narratives of reformation.

Clean Break Theatre Company is a women-only theatre company that grew out of a prisoner-led drama workshop that took place between 1977-1979 in HMP Askham Grange. In addition to its considerable impact on criminalised women and public understandings of the socio-political impact of their experiences, Clean Break has had a significant but under-acknowledged impact on contemporary British theatre. We examine three areas of Clean Break's theatre making history and organisational practices: its origin stories; its education and engagement work; and how the company's performance practices have, across five decades, 'then' and 'now', adapted to directly intervene in carceral society. By highlighting Clean Break's distinct activist theatre making processes and practices, the book makes explicit the genealogical connections of the company's past work and its impacts on contemporary feminist theatre practices.

Clean Break Theatre Company is a women-only theatre company that grew out of a prisoner-led drama workshop that took place between 1977-1979 in HMP Askham Grange. In addition to its considerable impact on criminalised women and public understandings of the socio-political impact of their experiences, Clean Break has had a significant but under-acknowledged impact on contemporary British theatre. We examine three areas of Clean Break's theatre making history and organisational practices: its origin stories; its education and engagement work; and how the company's performance practices have, across five decades, 'then' and 'now', adapted to directly intervene in carceral society. By highlighting Clean Break's distinct activist theatre making processes and practices, the book makes explicit the genealogical connections of the company's past work and its impacts on contemporary feminist theatre practices.

An international arts organisation and network engaging with music, dance, theatre and visual art, Phakama creates adventurous, site-responsive performances with large groups of people from diverse backgrounds. With contributions from participants, artists, academics and cultural commentators from India, Ireland, South Africa, the UK and USA, this book features case studies, interviews and articles covering two decades of practice. At the heart of the book is a selection of carefully explained and beautifully illustrated exercises which will enable Phakama's methodology to be used by organisations and practitioners working with young people internationally.Phakama is a Xhosa and Zulu word for stand up, arise, empower yourself. With a focus on collaborative, non-hierarchical performance making, Phakama invites cultural sharing and critical engagement with the world we live in. As well as engaging with political and critical concerns about contemporary theatre and performance, the book offers unique approaches to devising theatre, applied and social theatre, intercultural performance practices and pedagogic models of collaboration and cultural leadership.

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.

An international arts organisation and network engaging with music, dance, theatre and visual art, Phakama creates adventurous, site-responsive performances with large groups of people from diverse backgrounds. With contributions from participants, artists, academics and cultural commentators from India, Ireland, South Africa, the UK and USA, this book features case studies, interviews and articles covering two decades of practice. At the heart of the book is a selection of carefully explained and beautifully illustrated exercises which will enable Phakama's methodology to be used by organisations and practitioners working with young people internationally.Phakama is a Xhosa and Zulu word for stand up, arise, empower yourself. With a focus on collaborative, non-hierarchical performance making, Phakama invites cultural sharing and critical engagement with the world we live in. As well as engaging with political and critical concerns about contemporary theatre and performance, the book offers unique approaches to devising theatre, applied and social theatre, intercultural performance practices and pedagogic models of collaboration and cultural leadership.