Rebecca Prichard

Clean Break is a British theatre company set up in 1979 by two women in prison. It exists to tell the stories of women with experience of the criminal justice system and to transform women’s lives through theatre.Over 40 years, Clean Break has commissioned some of the most progressive and brilliant women writers to write ground-breaking plays, alongside developing the writing skills of the women they work with in its London studios and in prisons. This is a collection of monologues from this canon.Rebel Voices: Monologues for Women by Women celebrates the opportunities inherent when women represent themselves. Offering female performers a diverse set of monologues reflecting a range of characters in age, ethnicity and lived experience, the material is drawn from a mix of published and unpublished works. This book is for any performer who does not see themselves represented in mainstream plays, for lovers of radical women’s theatre and for rebels everywhere who believe that the act of speaking and being heard can create change.

Six plays by some of the most exciting and distinctive female voices in British theatre, exploring the heartbreaking truth about the lives of women in the criminal justice system. The plays were commissioned and premiered by Clean Break, a theatre and education company working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. Included in this volume: Fatal Light by Chloë Moss, about a young mother's inability to cope with separation from her daughter. Taken by Winsome Pinnock, about a mother confronted by the child she had to give up. Dream Pill by Rebecca Prichard, about two children forced into prostitution. Doris Day by E V Crowe, about two police officers and their different expectations of the job. Dancing Bears by Sam Holcroft, about the twisted loyalties and violence in teenage gangs. That Almost Unnameable Lust by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, about a writer holding workshops with older women in a prison. The plays were first performed at Soho Theatre, London, in November 2010.