Inside Bitch

Stacey Gregg, Deborah Pearson, Lucy Edkins, Jennifer Joseph, TerriAnn Oudjar, Jade Small

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786827470
• eBook ISBN: 9781786827418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Violence in Society
• Index: Social Sciences

Working collaboratively with Deborah Pearson and Stacey Gregg, four Clean Break members, who are artists with prison experience, created Inside Bitch. This show challenges societal perceptions by challenging the stories we tell through television, the media, and to ourselves. Inside Bitch questions what is lost when we try to tell a story.

Shawshank

1.

JADE steps forward, out of the “picture” from behind the curtain, and puts on the record player:

“Marriage of Figaro” plays at top volume.

The others pause in their jobs. Gaze upward, appreciatively. Or we imagine they do from what we can see of them behind the curtain.

The music swells.

JEN appears and approaches the sound booth. She enters it and enacts the following in an American accent as the others return to their tasks variously:

Jen (V.O.)

I have no idea to this day what them two Italian ladies were singin’ about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singin’ about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.

Beat.

I tell you, those voices soared. Higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away…and for the briefest of moments – every last man at Shawshank felt free.

The music stops abruptly.
The others begin walking behind the curtain.
JEN and JADE hurry back to their job and join them.

LOCKED UP

(Gathering Material)

2.

They circle.

They line up behind the curtain.

They discover the curtain.

They peer through the curtain at us, the audience.

A clip begins to play behind the audience

The performers open the curtain a small amount.

They are watching something on a screen.

We cannot see what it is.

They collectively replicate the actions from the clip.

One at a time they may produce a clipboard, and begin to observe details about the clip in one word sentences, in facts, such as:

Tray.

Gray walls.

Yellow jacket.

White teeth.

Plastic box.

Curly hair.

Eyeballs.

It is as though they are alien scientists.

The clip finishes with a collective beat.

They turn and one of them opens the curtain on the back wall, something like the kind of traditional curtain you would see in a cinema, now revealing a screen upon which the clip plays again with volume, so that we can see it. It is a clip from Spanish TV series LOCKED UP. The dialogue is in Spanish.

The company watch with us and reaffirm their initial observations, almost like playing bingo.

Once it has finished, they all look at us.

Clear? Good. On we go.

Orange
Is
the
New
Black
Rant
(list)

3.

One of our company explains that as part of the research for this Project we screened “Orange is the New Black” for prison staff:

Hello everyone.

It’s nice to see you all here at the Royal Court.

OK so we did a lot of research.

As part of the research, Deborah and Stacey screened a prison show called "Orange is the New Black" for a bunch of prisoner officers.

They recorded it, and this is the transcript of what one male officer had to say. Lucy?

LUCY takes the mic and reads from a clipboard. At some point her tone becomes more authoritative, and by the end rather whiney.

[Excerpt] “Rubbish. And anyone who sees this yeah actually – just carry on, ‘cos the quicker we get through this – there’s too much in that that was wrong to make it even worth mentioning. I mean you have hierarchies in prison, you have bullying that goes on you have intimidation, harassment that goes on in prison, no way on this Earth would prison staff be as totally and utterly indifferent to what goes on, as they are in that programme. And I know it’s about TV, and everyone is made out to be worse than they are ‘cos, that’s where you get the ratings.”

LUCY has really cranked up!

“Those people – none of those people there would be in the job. None of them would be in the job because that is atrocious. No prison would be run that badly. Even our private jails here will not be run that badly. I...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Project.
• Artists’ Notes.
• The Storyboard.
• Beat Sheet.
• 1. Shawshank
• 2. LOCKED UP
• 3. Orange Is the New Black Rant (list)
• 4. Card Game 1
• 5. VERBATIM
• 6. COSTUMES
• 7. Card Game 2
• 8. P.I.C TRUMPS
• 9. SETTING
• 10. PITCH!
• 11. RED CARPET AND FEATURETTE
• 12. MERCH
• 13. REVIEWS
• 14. SET TO SELF-DESTRUCT
• End Notes.
• The Process.