“I know exactly how much I am worth. I am worth 1000 Euros because that is how much Babac paid for me. To put this in easy language, that is like two and a half iPhones.”

Trailblazing theatre company Clean Break teams up with visionary playwright Lucy Kirkwood to take audiences on a luminous journey exploring the life of Dijana Polančec: professional romantic, eternal optimist and accidental prostitute.

"During Lucy Kirkwood’s residency with Clean Break, we went to see Helen Bamber Foundation’s installation Journey in Trafalgar Square – an emotive piece of work about sex trafficking.  Afterwards, we started to find out about the sheer scale of the industry and Lucy Kirkwood immersed herself in research. We sought assistance with our research and this was provided by The Poppy Project, an organisation working with trafficked women to offer advice, services and re-housing – and the Human Trafficking Team from the Met.

Lucy then wrote the story of Djana, who has been trafficked from Croatia to London.  What is extraordinary about the play is that her story is told through objective and subjective realities. The audience sits in her grim working room; in the detention centre cell on her first night; and in the flat she shares with her lover Babac right at the beginning of the story, but compellingly, the audience is also someone she is speaking to in her mind. As she battles to survive the inhumanity of being sold for sex, Djana uses everything she has to survive – imagination, hope and denial.  The production was created in a warehouse, where we built several rooms through which the audience followed Djana through her story. The audience said they felt like they were inside Djana’s head and then at other points, like voyeurs. The play was joint winner of the John Whiting Award in 2010."

Lucy Morrison, Head of Artistic Programme