A Moveable Theatre presents This Wide Night by Chloe Moss
Directed by Michael Bea, Producer Terry Hansen
Backdock Arts
February 18th - March 7th, 2021
A Disturbing Paradigm-shifting Experience!
Dr Gemma Regan
There was a deathly silence after the final scene, then finally a loud and appreciative applause after the audience transitioned from being immersed in the lives of Marie and Lorraine back to their own reality. I had been so convinced that the characters were real that I had to curb my instinct to rush up and hug them both!
Entering through a dark graffitied passageway into an inner city courtyard and passing under a staircase into a tiny stepped-theatre was an appropriate adjustment from my common day reality to witness that of a newly released female prisoner. The harsh and often lonely transition women face on release after serving a sentence in a correctional centre is something most people have never considered. After the predictability of an institutionalised life, “freedom” can be a terrifying prospect, with little financial support or any clear life pathway. The women often feel alienated by society, sometimes having lost custody of their children and with no home or family support.
Director Michael Bea (Vincent River, Henry Ibsen’s Ghosts) describes Backdock Arts' production of This Wide Night as “landing you in the middle of a primeval big bang, a universal scream for life”. Producer Terry Hansen has produced and performed in over 30 productions and despite being best known as a comedian and breakfast radio announcer on 973fm, he is very community-minded. He was involved in a Labour Market funded program to enable non-theatre goers to experience a play on self-worth, in a bleak unemployment landscape.
The scene is a simple bedsit somewhere in South London with the audience sitting in Marie’s desolate one-roomed flat. Lorraine, a former cellmate visits after her release, further complicating Marie’s already difficult life. The two ostracised women flit between clinging to one another for support and despising each other.
Marie is played convincingly by Shardé Anne (Unspeakable Acts of Privacy, 10 Short Plays for Neuroses) as a strong, but young disillusioned woman who has managed to get some night work and to rent a tiny bedsit. She is determined to put her past of domestic violence behind her and make something of herself. She is struggling, but coping until Lorraine her older cellmate turns up at her door with only one bag but a tonne of baggage. The incredible Julia Johnson (So Much to Tell You, Macbeth) portrays the middle-aged Lorraine as a caring simple-minded inmate with strong maternal instincts towards Marie. However, there is a terrifying violent fury that simmers beneath the surface caused by years of abuse.
The focus of the characters is often on the broken TV with no sound, acting as a pervasive reminder of the women who have no voice. Each scene is punctuated with a silent visual display designed by Wayne McPhee, of stills of the women exhibiting a terrifying range of emotions. It was extremely powerful and disturbing, hammering home the unknown dire situation in which former female inmates find themselves upon “release”.
This Wide Night by Chloe Moss, was inspired after discussions with women on a three-month playwriting residency at HMP Cookham in the UK, from which Chloe claims she had gathered enough material for over fifty plays! Despite being based on issues in the UK, two ninety-minute workshops of selected scenes from the play with women at the Helena Jones Correctional Centre in South-East Queensland confirmed that there is a great deal of commonality between the women’s experiences. Amy Compton-Keen is the passionate workshop facilitator and CEO of SerO4 and the MARA project, helping rehabilitate released women from correctional centres. MARA provides women with an inreach program in custody and an outreach program on their release to help provide support and avoid recidivism. In Queensland, nearly 40 percent of women re-offend within two years due to desperation, but for those women on the MARA project the rate has been reduced to only 9%!
This Wide Night is a powerful paradigm-shifting play highlighting an issue that has long been ignored. It is both disturbing and enlightening and I urge you all to see it!