Award-winning playwright and director Danusia Iwaszko brings their powerful new play Penned Up to stages across the UK this autumn. Inspired by over 15 years of teaching playwriting in prisons, the production offers a raw and witty look at life behind bars.
Blending humour with heartbreak, Penned Up explores the transformative power of storytelling and the unexpected connections forged through creativity. With a cast of eight and a bold creative team, the show promises a unique theatrical experience.
Penned Up opened at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds and is touring nationwide. For tickets and full tour dates, visit thehalcompany.org.
You’ve written Penned Up, which is touring. What can you tell us about the show?
In Penned Up, you join a group of prisoners who have opted to take a playwriting course led by teacher Dorota and supervised by a guard, Mike. The play follows them over the 10 weeks from joining and not really knowing what it’s about, to them eventually writing their plays.
Over the course of the play, you get to know the prisoners—why they’re there, who they really are—and you see their (and the guard’s) growth and change. It’s funny and touching (reviews have said “laugh out loud funny and poignant”) as you get to know the guys.
Penned Up is inspired by your 17 years of teaching playwriting in prisons. How did those experiences influence the story?
It’s the whole framework of the story. In my experience, as the men begin to trust you, they reveal more and more about their lives and their pasts.
During those 17 years, I’ve been struck by the humanity and diversity of the men I teach, contrary to the images we often get in film and TV dramas. I’ve been moved by their backgrounds that have led them to commit their crimes, and I wanted to share my experience with people who haven’t had that experience.
The play is described as “Porridge meets Brassed Off.” How did you balance humour with the more serious themes?
The humour is a true reflection of the men that I meet. Guards have come into my classes asking us to keep the laughter down as it’s annoying the other classes in education.
One guard came in and said, “Can you keep the noise down, it’s pissing the brick layers right off!” (That’s in the play.) The humour runs throughout the play, but as the men reveal more about themselves and their backgrounds, the serious themes emerge.
What was it like directing your own script, especially one rooted in real-life voices and experiences?
Directing it has been a total joy, and I’m embarrassed to say that sometimes I’ve been moved by the work as I recall the true incidents it relates to.
When I direct my own writing, I put my “director’s hat on” and cut the stuff that doesn’t work. It’s an ongoing joke in the company when I cut and change, or the actors cut and change, that the writer won’t like it—but let’s do it anyway!
The play explores creativity within confinement. What do you hope audiences take away from that message?
How extraordinarily effective it is. How it increases the prisoners’ confidence and self-expression. How it helps to give them skills and tools for the future and also to aid change and non-reoffending.
One prisoner said, “I learned to express myself with words not violence.”
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Penned Up?
As we’ve already started our tour, I can say with confidence it’s an entertaining and moving night at the theatre. We’ve had many good reviews and the actors are fantastic.
Come and see a different take on prisons and prisoners—not violence and aggression, but thoughtfulness and a desire to change and grow.
