7.30 pm
Wednesday 9 -Thursday 17 April 2025
B.ARTS, 64 Hartshill Road Stoke-on-Trent ST4 7RB
United Kingdom
Tickets £10 and £6.50 available from https://bit.ly/3XdhjRJ
Nights are long in prison. The minutes drag by for both the watched and the watchers like a dirty mop on a dirty floor. Tales are told, secrets shared, rumours whispering under the doors, down the pipes, leaking through the locks.
In that hinterland between sleep and wakefulness, the timeline of history buckles and twists as the past and present begin their endless dance: the smell of a vape, the splash of the slop out, the taste of gruel, the ache of the treadwheel, the creak of the hangman’s rope.
The nights are long in prison for those who are out of time. How long is long enough?
Punishment Acts is a co production between Rideout and B arts. It draws on the ideas of people with lived experience of multiple disadvantage including custody. Made following a series of workshops with Expert Citizens CIC exploring themes in Discipline and Punish by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, it will ask audiences to reflect on beliefs about punishment and consider whether there are other ways to achieve ‘justice’.
Suitable for audiences 15+
Punishment Acts is a co production between Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) and B arts, working in association with Expert Citizens.
Punishment Acts is part of the practice based and collaborative work of Staging Justice, a two year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that explores interdisciplinary, public engagement, and histories in Rideout’s creative work over the past 25 years.
Rideout is an arts organisation that specialises in work in the criminal justice system, especially prison. Established in 1999, the company has a reputation for facilitating exciting and innovative arts projects that enable people in prison to explore new perspectives on themselves and others, alongside public facing work that challenges audiences to consider the form and fuction of prison.
B arts is one of the country’s longest running community and participatory arts organisations. Established in 1985 the company produces high quality arts experiences with people from many different backgrounds who would not normally engage with the arts. They aim to strengthen the cultural infrastructure in our area; increase the diversity and range of artists and producers working in the region, and offer quality and depth of engagement in the arts to all.
Expert Citizens is a Community Interest Company led by people with lived experience of homelessness, mental ill-health, addiction, domestic abuse, poverty or histories of offending behaviour. They specialise both in supporting others with lived experience alongside partnership work with statutory and voluntary sector organisations across Stoke-on-Trent to help reduce barriers to participation.
Punishment Acts builds on a successful partnership between the three organisations that began originally with the show, In Plain Sight, the explored myths associated with street homelessness in February 2020.
Foucault News 
As an artist and a reader of Foucault, I was glad to learn that you are finding ways to address urgent socio-economic, legal and ethical problems through your theater.
LikeLike
I have forwarded your remark to the organisers
LikeLike