At the end of a prison sentence, regardless of their crime, all prisoners need to find their place back in society. It’s preferable to know that ex-offenders have had an opportunity to consider a future more positive than being drawn back into the spiral of reoffending.
Penned Up, a new drama by Suffolk-based playwright Danusia Iwaszko, draws on her 17 years of teaching in men’s prisons. In her experience, the majority of men she’s taught share similar patterns
of past struggles that have shaped their lives, the most prominent being a combined lack of good role models and self-confidence.
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She has witnessed students opening up and developing skills they were unaware of, tackling subject matter they hadn’t previously explored and opening up ways of seeing themselves in a new light.
“I’d say 90% of those I’ve encountered in prison are full of remorse,” Iwaszko says. “They have had such poor opportunities and education, that’s so often why they turn to crime. They have energy and ambition but don’t know what to do with it and channel it in the wrong place.”
Looking to destigmatise the portrayal of prisoners, the play is set in the fictional HMP Ditchfield and follows six inmates (an amalgam of offenders with a cross section of offences from drug dealing, theft, murder, dangerous driving and fraud) attempting to find liberation through writing. Imaginary scenarios veer from Love Island to the Isle of Iona, boxing rings to the Brazilian rainforest.