Contact & Fink On’s Strangeways up on the roof

Renowned protest leader Paul Taylor will mark 20 years since the historic Strangeways riot by appearing on the roof of Contact Theatre, Manchester today. Taylor will be on the roof to help promote Contact and Fink On Theatre’s co-production of Crying In The Chapel: Strangeways – An Inside Account, an insight into the riot that revealed a penal system pushed beyond its limits, which opens later this month.

Taylor will be on the roof of Contact with a banner reading ‘Media Contact Now’, a recreation of the banner the prisoners used to get to speak to the press and then outline their demands. These included longer visiting periods, longer exercise time and an end to 23-hour lock up.

Based on the accounts and records of the prisoners themselves Crying In The Chapel pulls no punches in highlighting the conditions and treatment of the prisoners before, during and after the riots. A savage indictment of a system in chaos the play recounts with courage and conviction a moment that changed the British prison system forever.

Co-writer and producer, Nick Clarke says, “Strangeways was a massive piece of social history that is still of great relevance today. It’s strange how our younger generations know very little of the uprising. Hopefully this event will help remind people of an important moment in our penal history.“

Crying In The Chapel will be at Contact April 26 to May 8. For more details click here.