This Wide Night

Theatre isn't just about dazzling footlights and the smell of greasepaint. It can be used to educate, inform, even change lives. And no better example of this is Clean Break, a theatre, education and new writing company that uses theatre for personal and political change, working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. Their latest play, This Wide Night by Chloe Moss (The Way Home, How Love is Spelt, A Day in Dull Armour ) has just opened at the Soho Theatre and after a regional tour will visit women's prisons around the country. Here Moss writes an exclusive piece for Open on her experience of working on such a unique, challenging and important project.

I was commissioned by Clean Break in 2006 to write a play on the theme of women and crime for the company’s annual touring theatre production.  The company’s ambition is for its theatre productions and education programmes to excite and invigorate audiences, and to transform the lives of the women with whom it works.
 
Each year the company commissions a professional female playwright to create a piece. I follow in the footsteps of some really great writers to be commissioned by the company, including Bryony Lavery, Winsome Pinnock, Tanika Gupta and Rebecca Prichard. The plays tour to theatres and women’s prisons with accompanying education work.

Prior to writing the play, during the summer of 2006, I spent three months running workshops in HMP Cookham Wood (which has since been re-rolled as a men’s prison), along with Lucy Morrison, Clean Break’s Head of New Writing and Director of This Wide Night.
 
The play in inspired by the small group of women that we met and worked with who were in prison for a variety of offences, serving sentences of different lengths  and including some long-term prisoners. This Wide Night explores the importance and uniqueness of relationships formed in prison: how they can, or perhaps cannot, exist in another context; and also resettlement – when “freedom” can actually feel like a very bleak and frightening prospect.
 
One of the most exciting parts of the playwriting process for me is the first day of rehearsals. The play is (almost!) complete and you're handing it over to the rest of the company. I love that theatre is collaborative; you spend so long on your own in a room that to be able to hand it over to the director, actors and designers and see it come to life in ways which you hadn't imagined is incredibly satisfying.
 
Usually I'll spend the first and last week in the rehearsal; answering questions about the play and making changes if needed and then seeing how it has developed.
 
This Wide Night changed quite a bit in the first week; because it's a two hander we had to ensure that all the drama happens in the room rather than being reported. Which is actually harder than you realise: you think that you've nailed this and then get in the rehearsal room, hear it out loud and realise that there are still cuts to be made or bits of unnecessary exposition that have to be re-jigged.
 
Lucy the director and the actors Cathy and Jan have been brilliant. It's quite an intense play and although there are plenty of comedic light moments they have to flip quite quickly into complicated heavy emotional stuff. They've really nailed this and watching run throughs in this last week of rehearsals I've been really moved, which is great because usually at this point I'm a bit jittery and watching it from a slightly removed, technical point of view.
 
I feel really proud of this play and think that audiences will enjoy it and engage with and respond to the characters in the way they deserve, particularly when we take it into prisons. I've felt a big responsibility to the women that I met during my visits to Cookham Wood and above everything else, I hope the play feels truthful to them.

Chloe Moss

This Wide Night now showing at Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London,  W1D 3NE, until 9th August, www.sohotheatre.com
Live Theatre Newcastle, 17th and 18th September, 0191 232 1232, Drum Theatre, Plymouth, 23rd to 27th September, 01752 267222