I’m writing blogs to celebrate 25yrs of Open Clasp, this is the penultimate last in the series before we stop and celebrate at our Annual General Meeting on the 13th June.
I placed don’t forget the birds alongside Lasagna and Rupture, even though don’t forget sits more naturally with Key Change (it’s Cheryl Byron’s story) because each of these shows capture the impact of mothers and children being separated, of loss and the journeys travelled to find each other or themselves.
Don’t Forget the Birds
Written by Catrina McHugh
Directed by Laura Lindow
Don’t Forget the Birds (2014 to present day)
We/I met Cheryl when she was inside HMP Low Newton in 2014. Cheryl was one of the original Key Change co-creators and a natural storyteller, performer and an around total joy to work with. On release, it just so happened that Cheryl probation was at West End Women & Girls Centre, where are offices are based and one Wednesday I bumped into Cheryl. It was one of the most surreal moments as we had never seen each other outside of jail and it was the best feeling to see her again. It was still 2014, and we were fundraising to take Key Change the Edinburgh festival in 2015. I ask Cheryl would she do a piece to camera for the crowdfunding campaign, and she did – and to this day Cheryl would do anything for Open Clasp and vice versa. Cheryl, along with her daughter, Abigail are both now Gold Star Members with the company – which has, over the past 10yrs become a collective of women/co-creators from different projects who advise the company, speak at events/conferences, are part of post-show panels and training for new writers or facilitators to the company.
I’m looking back at emails from that time, finding one written asking the then Governor via the Head of Reducing Reoffending if Cheryl could attend our AGM on the 9th Oct 2014 ‘if Cheryl Byron could have an extension on her tag so she can attend…. we start the meeting is at 6pm, and whole event finishes at 7.30… I think her tag is till 6.45.
In December that year, Cheryl and I do our first conference and joint presentation – Does prison work for women? – 11th December 2014 – alongside Louise Ridley, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Northumbria University, Vera Baird (then) Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner – Jenny Earle, Prison Reform Trust – Louise Clark, Clinks – Paula Harriot, Service User from User Voice – NEPACS – supporting a positive future for prisoners and their families – Sarah Cochrane, women’s diversion project – Open Clasp Theatre Company (Catrina McHugh and Cheryl Byron) – Vicky Pryce – economist and author of ‘Prisonomics’, which analyses the economic and human costs of imprisoning women
The questions the conference were addresses where – What works? What do we need to know more about? What questions would you like to ask the panel?
Then on the 10th December 2014 I suggest to Laura Lindow (Associate Director) the following (email)
Hiya Laura, I hope you are ok…..x I’m emailing just because I’ve been with Cheryl B and was talking about the one woman show, and she’s really in need and up for doing this, and I’m now thinking about how I can start the ball rolling with funding etc
In 2015 we took Key Change to Edinburgh, flew back and forth to New York in the January 2016. I see emails in February 2016 (just back from New York) and we’re setting up the workshops for Sugar, emailing the legend that is Tricia Duffy at Women’s Direct Access in Manchester (a life long friend/ally and advocate for women who are homeless). Emails that mark the moment Carly McConnell joins the company as the Development Manager, working alongside Creative Producer Jill Heslop, they are trying to raise funds for Sugar, Rattle Snake and don’t get the birds.
Then in September 2016 I see I’m sending the first transcripts of the interviews with both Cheryl and Abigail (Cheryl’s daughter – so it’s no longer a one woman show, it’s a story of a mother and a daughter). Its an email to Associate Director Laura Lindow and cc Jess Johnson, who joins the project as an assistant to Laura, offering pastoral care, support and confidence to Cheryl and Abigail – this is their first time as professional actors about to embark on a national tour.
The email……
Hiya, I’ve attached the transcribes from the chats with Cheryl and then Abigail. I haven’t really touched them, so they are raw and just how they spoke, but they have a journey, and I cried today listening to Abz song she had in her head when her mam got sent down. I think we should sing and dance the week away, and at the same time tell the story of mothers and daughters, and what happens when something breaks….x (30/09/16)
We secure seed funding from Black Theatre Live via Queens Hall Hexham which enabled us to have our first Research and Development week. Working with Laura, I had place words into a narrative, crafting and shaping the story of when prison took one from the other. I had interviewed them separately and they weren’t aware what the other had said. It was like sliding doors, same story different lens. As we talked Abigail shared that she had been excited for her mum to see all the things they had done while she had been in prison, decorating their family home. Cheryl talked about how the house didn’t feel like her home anymore.
I’m with Abigail and we’re wrapping up, Abigail shares that things aren’t the same with her mum – that familiar feeling of being able to place your feet up on her mother’s lap, or cuddles, touching, being comfortable with closeness just isn’t there – she hasn’t shared this with her mum but she’s happy for me to place her feeling in a script.
So on the first day of the Research and Development week, we give them the script and suggest that they take a moment to read what the other has said, but they say no, ‘we will just read it together, its fine’ and they did.
We have never worked like this before, a real life mother and daughter telling their own story and it felt a huge responsibility and risk because they were close still and what happens if a truth causes a crack to widen even into a chasm. We take a breathe and follow their lead, stepping together, they and us, a team, they have agency and power – the change the title ‘Roses’ to ‘don’t’ forget the birds’ much better!
They spend a week stepping into the shoes of themselves, past and present – reading, hearing and re-enacting life experiences – turning pages into a captivating, life affirming and heartwarming story of love and we see a ‘mother and a daughter’. By the Friday we know we have a show.
Don’t forget the birds (a co-production with Live Theatre) tours in 2018, gaining five and four stars and they win awards.
We plan for another tour in 2020, but then the pandemic hits and so we capture it on film, at Live Theatre and its distributed to audiences in their own homes, as was Key Change and Sugar via the BBC iPlayer during the pandemic.
Cheryl tells us she can’t watch it, but when she did, she really loved it…
The following is a transcribe of Cheryl speaking at our AGM in 2021
‘Cheryl told the audience about her they sat close on the sofa together, with their hands over their faces, and then slowly felt comfortable watching it…. she loved it…..Cheryl told the audience how she was really proud of how funny the funny parts were and how the sad parts, were really sad….Cheryl explained that watching it (as a film) she felt that she knew how Abigail felt more. Cheryl told the audience how after watching it they just hugged each other and cried.
Cheryl asked who did the credits*, as they are the best ever! Cheryl explained how they have family pictures on the credits, which include Cheryl’s mam and dad. Cheryl told the audience that it was an honour to see, and she told the audience that she is going to be a Nana, and the whole room applauded for her and Abigail and Baby. Cheryl thanked Open Clasp again and said that she can’t wait for the baby to be able to see their Nana and Mam in the film’.
*Carly McConnell (Creative Producer)
Then this year for International Women’s Day we showcased don’t forget the birds in front of a live audience who had gathered for an Afternoon of Activism. It was again surreal to watch them, watching their story being told to a room full of women, we watched them as they watched themselves. It was as raw, honest and heartfelt as the day/s we spent in those first interviews.
They cry as they watch, tears falling and the baby, who Abigail’s worries has been quiet recently, begins to kick, mother and daughter, daughter to be, together in a crowded room.
It’s been four years since the filming, and 10yrs from conception. Theatre is powerful, and don’t forget the birds continues, changing hearts and minds for them and all of us.
This story keeps rolling and we are honoured to have worked with Cheryl and Abigail for the past decade.
Lasagna (2020 to present day)
It’s January 2020 and Pause https://www.pause.org.uk/why-pause/ raise funds and invite Open Clasp to work with two groups of women, one in Cowgate then other Chester-Le-Street. It’s a short programme using our methodology to raise self esteem and confidence. The first group is small, mostly two women attending but four in total create a character and they call her Sara. They ask and then answer questions, using the drama, working creatively up on their feet, acting and sometimes drawing, maps and/or costumes, along with the content of their characters bag. They ask why Sara’s children are removed or at risk of removal, the map takes us to a high rise flat and domestic violence, dark clouds represent the hardest of times and letters are written to their younger selves.
Two of the women in this group don’t know it yet but they will go on to become Gold Star members of Open Clasp and will tour nationally with a show called Lasagna in 2023, a show that gets four stars and is finalist for awards. They are brave throughout, mothers who want to tell their stories, there is stigma and they know it won’t change their lives in terms of their children, but it might help other women who find themselves in the same situation.
But for now we are in Cowgate and they are stepping into their own shoes, re-acting hard moments. Each workshop is carefully design with joy book ended. We move on to Chester-le-street and these two women become mentors for the next much larger group. This group say they don’t want to look at the past, they create a character called Dolly, spend time identifying the positive, self care and we sing.
Pause (the women) want us to create a show about their lives, but it’s now the pandemic but Pause raise the funds, and we adapt our methodology and go online. We have already started working on line with a group of sex work activist in New Zealand/Aotearoa and we know our methodology adapted works.
We run 8 workshops with no idea if we/theatre will ever find its way back onstage, but we are committed to spending time and creating. Their character is a merge of Sara and Dolly (Sally). Working online is intermit, in our own homes, creative writing exercises are honest, for them and us (we write and share too). It’s the pandemic, and it’s also the moment Oct to Dec 2020 when I’m having biopsies and scans. As the workshops finish on the 8th December, I don’t know what my life is going to look like next (I can’t tell the women, who hope for script and production, whether online or live) and on the 14th December I’m told on the phone I have breast cancer, caught early but I’ll need an operation and radiotherapy, but it’s unknown until the operation, the outcome. I slightly fall apart:
On the 8th March 2021, I’m recovering but back and work. I blogged about that time, with encouragement, it felt good to paint pictures of the world I found myself in. Buster is there, and he isn’t now.
Lasagna is written and we go into rehearsals, its filmed and showcased in a cinema in Newcastle, the women and post-show panel (I have covid and miss the opening). But its at this moment, or the moment when its being filmed that one of the two women (who is in rehearsals, distant but present due to covid restrictions) and she says, it would be great live. We make this happen when we can, but for now it goes online (all of us in the office have a hard time know recalling the timeline during the pandemic) but while its online, we raise the funds to tour live in 2023. I’m in Lasagna, my lived experience are threaded in a lot of the shows, my experience sometimes is close to that of the women we work with, as is the same for the staff and creative teams with Open Clasp (think people now say By and For) we’re a little like that. But the social worker gets a call telling her she has breast cancer, and by threading this into the story, I got a glimpse of what it feels like to see yourself on stage, I wasn’t hidden but exposed. I feel so proud of Lasagna, when it toured, our two Gold Stars joined the post-show discussion, along with social workers who had formed forums and/or who I’d interviewed. They held their own in rooms full of professionals, and they changed, as did those who gathered in rooms. Our tour in 2023 was the company first full live tour since the pandemic, and it was just the best feeling to be back. I love the reach, power of the digital but I love live theatre, I love both.
Rupture
In 2023 we produced Rupture in response to mothers who are incarcerated. This is a commission by Durham University and NEPACS and the report captures written captures the call for action/change:
We had run workshops at the end of 2022 in HMP Low Newton.
Writing: Rupture is my first one woman show. Rattle Snake was my first two hander, Lasagna my second and now just one. I’m following my instinct, my gut and confident in my ability to craft. I loved writing Rupture, I wrote the first draft in a day, I followed Destiny onto the roof of the prison, there she meets a vulture. The women had named perpetrators vultures, and I was adamant I wasn’t going to have a vulture in the play, even when everyone noticed it highlighted in the workshops, on flipcharts their wings flew and then as she climbed on the roof, there it was.
When writing Rupture, I’d written Mycelial (our nine casts (huge international production) in that there was/is a talking cat. I wondered if the vulture should talk, like the cat, but I didn’t want it to. The cat works but opening the mouth/beak of a vulture wasn’t needed. It sits hunched, soaked and then the sky lights up, stars and fireworks, dogs and ice cream vans bark and chime. It’s a moment to breath out and roar.
In the spring of 2023, so before Rupture, we had taken Lasagna into the prison, it was the first time we were able to take sound/lights/set/vans/props, I mean everything in. The women got a full on production. Pure Art inside the prison. We had read Lasagna to the women working on Rupture, talked about Key Change and now we were back inside, the group had moved on to other prisons and/or were now released, but our commitment is to women/mothers in prison, even when those women move on.
In the hot summer of 2023 in steps are next new director, the legend that is Rachel Glover. Rachel had visited the women during the workshops, but it was now that Rachel took the reigns, bringing in new creative teams with the voice of Nicky Rushton and visuals with Kate Sweeny. of 2023 we took Rupture back in to showcase/preview. Set on a cold bonfire night we performed during one of the hottest summers. I remember women putting their head around the door, asking what we are doing and can they come and see.
Rupture is so beautiful, when I was feeling overwhelmed/stressed during the making of Mycelial, I wanted to climb on that roof and roar.
Catrina
