Staging Violence Against Women and Girls: Plays and Interviews

This collection brings together three international and contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women, alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who brought them to life.

With interviews with writers, directors and producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays, their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create awareness and empathy within the audiences.

Little Stitches (London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina , Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health professionals, women who support the practice and, finally, survivors.

Kubra (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and now brings her case to court.

Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in 1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused, in court and in everyday discourse.