Clean Break is very sad to announce the death of its longstanding employee Helen Pringle, Head of Finance and Senior Producer with the company since 2001. Helen passed away peacefully on 14 May following a long period of living with cancer.
"Helen was much admired and much loved, and is dearly missed by the Clean Break team and the family of women theatre artists in and around the company. She dedicated so much of her working life to Clean Break and was actively involved right up to a few weeks ago. She leaves a great legacy and strong memories of her passion for making theatre and for making a difference to the lives of women affected by the criminal justice system."
Lucy Perman, Executive Director
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of our incoming Head of Artistic Programme: Charlotte Gwinner. She will be with Clean Break until January of 2018 while Róisín McBrinn is on maternity leave. Charlotte was a founding member and the artistic director of Angle Theatre has held associate director positions at The Bush Theatre and Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse Theatres. She received a Peter Brook Award for her work with Angle Theatre in 2009, and the Quercus Award for Theatre Directors 2013.
Charlotte commented: "Clean Break is an inspiration in life and art; its unique combination of artistic excellence and social change gives it a far reaching relevance. I am thrilled to be able to join its inspirational team, consolidating on Roisin McBrinn's excellent and diverse programme of new work, at this time of acute political uncertainty."
Charlotte's time at Clean Break will be spent primarily in developing the large number of commissions we are currently engaged with, and working closely with our stable of playwrights to create a programme of plays for production in 2018. The company is pleased to welcome her into this vital role.
The Ministry of Justice announced today that a record 119 people have killed themselves while in custody in the last year, a devastating statistic. Overcrowding, and the cutting of staff numbers in addition to a lack of emphasis on mental health support have made the UK's prisons an unsafe place to be. It seems incredible that 10 years have passed since Baroness Corston made her recommendations for reform of the women's prison estate in The Corston Report, and in the face of such overwhelming evidence supporting her findings, so little has been done.
It has also been more than six years since celebrated playwright Chloë Moss, responding in part to the Corston Report, and inpartnership with Inquest wrote Fatal Light as part of Clean Break's Charged. In the playwright's own words:
"Something that came up a lot during the research process for writing Fatal Light was that, although prison sentences are often utterly devastating to the families of women in prison, there was an assumption that at the very least, their loved ones would be safe inside. Even though prison was the last place that their sister, mother, daughter should be, they trusted that they couldn’t come to any harm. That’s clearly not the case at all. The vulnerable are constantly being criminalised for having mental health problems.
The Corston report (a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system) was published in March 2007, following the deaths of six women at HMP Styal in just over twelve months. Four years later, there has been slow progress in implementing its recommendations for the sentencing and treatment of female prisoners. There are still so many cases of women who’ve spent their lives dealing with mental health problems and abuse, who are then incarcerated miles from families, support networks… their kids. Prison is the final straw for them.
The subject matter of Fatal Light is bleak of course, but that’s because the reality of the situation is bleak and therefore it’s hugely important to tell these stories and to question why deaths in custody keep happening. I actually think the play itself is, strangely, quite hopeful. The piece plays backwards in time and ends with Jay in a positive situation. Starting with her death and working backwards serves to highlight how avoidable these tragedies really are."
We can only hope that perhaps with the stark figures released this week behind them, the recommendations made in the Corston Report will at last be recognised as urgent.
If you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can find support with Women In Prison, a charity devoted to supporting the needs of women in prison, and Inquest a charity specialising in providing free advice to people bereaved by a death in custody.
