Inside Out

In a series of Applied Theatre workshops held in prisons, many talked about a sense of loss when they came into prison and the emotional difficulty of adjusting to prison.

We found that many of them had nothing to look forward to coming out of prison, their old life and relationships had gone. They’d lost their jobs, their families and their homes.

We started working on the link between prison and homelessness. We used the 7 stages of grief to structure it through a series of drama workshops and the result was the creation of a performance based on the stories of those we were working with.

Each scene in the play reflects a different stage in the seven stages of grief, looking at how the experience of grief and loss is similar.

We are never told why Man 1 was incarcerated or why Man 2 became homeless to emphasise that both are ‘everyman’.

Inside Out became a conversation between two characters – one is just out of prison and another who is homeless living on the street.

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The performance called on the public to challenge assumptions and perceptions and was performed throughout the UK in theatres, prisons and within communities.