Hannah Khalil’s new play, The Scar Test, set in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, is based on two years of research. I want the audience to come out thinking, “I can’t believe this is England.” There are brilliant documentaries about Yarl’s Wood and detention, but with theatre you can get into people’s hearts in a more visceral way. Theatre and confinement seem to have a connection – Samuel Beckett collaborating with ex-convict Rick Cluchey, plays in prisons. One of the women I met talked and talked about action films, it was all she wanted to talk to me about. And it’s the same with theatre: the world of the imagination is a freeing thing.

Source: The Guardian June 25, 2017 07:30 UTC