Jo Caird: Refusing to Pander to Prurience

Every Coin explores some fascinating
issues and is performed with great verve by a strong cast, but is not without
its flaws. I found that the elevated language of the play’s murderers and drug
dealers jarred uncomfortably with the characters’ familiarity with gang culture
and their references to their deprived and abusive upbringings. I don’t doubt
that highly articulate and politically aware prisoners exist, but I wasn’t
convinced that the sorts of conversations Robinson has written are really
taking place.

That said though, the play is a compelling piece of work,
particularly when taken as a document of life inside and a channeling of one
man’s reflections into a multi-character drama. No excuses need be made for
Robinson, who wrote Every Coin for a playwriting competition
run by Synergy in prisons around the country and received dramaturgical support from the company’s new writing manager, Neil Grutchfield ­– it’s just that the playwright’s
context adds a level of interest that makes the whole evening a more satisfying
affair.

I’m not very comfortable with the fact that my enjoyment of
the work is influenced by a sort of prurient fascination with a life so unlike
my own, but I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Synergy has an
excellent track record of producing high quality professional work alongside
the immensely valuable work it does in prisons and with former prisoners, so audiences
in the know will be aware that the company can be trusted, but for those who
haven’t heard of it before, the opportunity to peer into an utterly different
world is surely a big draw.

The same is true of Clean Break, which does similar work to
Synergy, but with a focus on women touched by the criminal justice system. The
challenge for both these companies is to create persuasive drama that is
relevant to the lives of the men and women whose stories they seek to tell,
while avoiding playing to the voyeuristic desires of the audience. It’s a
delicate balancing act but one that’s vital to get right if this type of
theatre is to have creative integrity and treat those involved with the respect
they deserve.

Fortunately, Synergy and Clean Break have each found
successful formulas to do just that. Lucy Morrison, head of artistic programme
at Clean Break, told me that the key is telling the stories of the women the
company works with without paying heed to what an audience might like to see. She
explained that actually the playwrights she works with have the opposite
problem, feeling the need to lighten the unbelievably bleak material they draw
from when writing in order to avoid creating work that is merely depressing. I
saw the extraordinary result of this process this week at the Finborough,
where a Clean Break commission, Naomi Wallace’s And I and
Silence, a play about rape, incarceration and racial abuse, managed to make me
laugh as well as weep.

Synergy’s solution, says artistic director Esther
Baker (who directed Robinson’s Every Coin), is to focus
on giving a platform to emerging voices in an attempt to give a true insight
into a world and themes that are rarely discussed. By nurturing the voice of first-time playwright Robinson to ready Every Coin for the stage, the company has done exactly this.

Audiences will always, I think, be attracted by what is
gritty, dark and other, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as
companies like Synergy and Clean Break continue to make work that sensitively
shines a light into this darkness and ultimately leaves audiences enlightened, we can probably forgive a touch of prurience on the way in.