PRESS RELEASE
"Endlessly inventive ... thoroughly
disquieting. It's stunning; you can't help but
catch your breath." The Metro
"A delicate work of damaged poetry and slow-moving grace. Beautifully accomplished, a remarkable debut." The Herald
SCOTSMAN FRINGE FIRST WINNER 2008
TOTAL THEATRE AWARD FOR BEST VISUAL THEATRE AT EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL 2008
REDCAPE THEATRE is committed to telling stories that matter, move and entertain using visuals, physical storytelling and original writing, THE IDIOT COLONY debuted at the Edinburgh Festival 2008.
Three women have spent decades wandering the wards and corridors of THE IDIOT COLONY. Locked away for their illicit loves, they relive their faltering memories amidst the drugs, brutality and restraints of the Asylum.
THE IDIOT COLONY is a tragicomic exposé of the forced incarceration of young women in mental asylums during the 1940’s and 1950’s for crimes ranging from illegitimate pregnancy to lesbianism, anti-social behaviour, being abused, even for being considered ‘too promiscuous’ or ‘flirtatious’. An original new work of devised theatre, THE IDIOT COLONY is a spectacular vision depicting human rights abuses not in some far off totalitarian state, but in recent history in our own backyard.
Based on real life accounts, THE IDIOT COLONY tells the story of lives forever destroyed for the crime of falling in love with the wrong person. Detained, often on the orders of family members for the sake of saving grace from social scandal, some would stay within the Asylum for the rest of their lives.
For the inmates of THE IDIOT COLONY, the only respite is the hospital’s hairdressing salon. In this haven of intimacy, laughter and eighties pop songs, they find endings to the stories they have waited so long to tell.
Genuinely moving and humorous with beautiful visual imagery – THE IDIOT COLONY is physically devised and performed by Fringe First award winning actors/devisors, Claire Coaché, Rebecca Loukes and Cassandra Friend, directed by award winning visual theatre artist Andrew Dawson, (Pandora 88, Absence & Presence) and written by Bafta and Rose D'or nominated Lisle Turner.
Notes to Editors:
Researched for over a year, interviewing staff and patients of mental hospitals all over England, the original inspiration for the play came from a story told by a hairdresser who worked in a salon inside a Midlands Mental Hospital in the 1980’s. She talked about some of the elderly long-term female patients who were in the hospital because they had had illegitimate babies by American GI’s. 50 years of institutionalisation, drug treatments, electric shock therapies and in some cases neuro-surgery left these women permanently altered. The women stayed within these hospitals until their closure during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s under the ‘Care in the Community Act’. A recent news story featured Jean Gambell, freed after 70 years in mental institutions (and finally a care home for being wrongfully accused of stealing 2s 6d) died in October 2007. The action in THE IDIOT COLONY takes place inside the hairdressing salon of a mental institution.
Press & Marketing
Shaun Dawson
Turtle Key Arts
020 8964 5060
shaun@turtlekeyarts.org.uk
"A delicate work of damaged poetry and slow-moving grace. Beautifully accomplished, a remarkable debut." The Herald
SCOTSMAN FRINGE FIRST WINNER 2008
TOTAL THEATRE AWARD FOR BEST VISUAL THEATRE AT EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL 2008
REDCAPE THEATRE is committed to telling stories that matter, move and entertain using visuals, physical storytelling and original writing, THE IDIOT COLONY debuted at the Edinburgh Festival 2008.
Three women have spent decades wandering the wards and corridors of THE IDIOT COLONY. Locked away for their illicit loves, they relive their faltering memories amidst the drugs, brutality and restraints of the Asylum.
THE IDIOT COLONY is a tragicomic exposé of the forced incarceration of young women in mental asylums during the 1940’s and 1950’s for crimes ranging from illegitimate pregnancy to lesbianism, anti-social behaviour, being abused, even for being considered ‘too promiscuous’ or ‘flirtatious’. An original new work of devised theatre, THE IDIOT COLONY is a spectacular vision depicting human rights abuses not in some far off totalitarian state, but in recent history in our own backyard.
Based on real life accounts, THE IDIOT COLONY tells the story of lives forever destroyed for the crime of falling in love with the wrong person. Detained, often on the orders of family members for the sake of saving grace from social scandal, some would stay within the Asylum for the rest of their lives.
For the inmates of THE IDIOT COLONY, the only respite is the hospital’s hairdressing salon. In this haven of intimacy, laughter and eighties pop songs, they find endings to the stories they have waited so long to tell.
Genuinely moving and humorous with beautiful visual imagery – THE IDIOT COLONY is physically devised and performed by Fringe First award winning actors/devisors, Claire Coaché, Rebecca Loukes and Cassandra Friend, directed by award winning visual theatre artist Andrew Dawson, (Pandora 88, Absence & Presence) and written by Bafta and Rose D'or nominated Lisle Turner.
Notes to Editors:
Researched for over a year, interviewing staff and patients of mental hospitals all over England, the original inspiration for the play came from a story told by a hairdresser who worked in a salon inside a Midlands Mental Hospital in the 1980’s. She talked about some of the elderly long-term female patients who were in the hospital because they had had illegitimate babies by American GI’s. 50 years of institutionalisation, drug treatments, electric shock therapies and in some cases neuro-surgery left these women permanently altered. The women stayed within these hospitals until their closure during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s under the ‘Care in the Community Act’. A recent news story featured Jean Gambell, freed after 70 years in mental institutions (and finally a care home for being wrongfully accused of stealing 2s 6d) died in October 2007. The action in THE IDIOT COLONY takes place inside the hairdressing salon of a mental institution.
Press & Marketing
Shaun Dawson
Turtle Key Arts
020 8964 5060
shaun@turtlekeyarts.org.uk