Learning how to tell stories gives prisoners the chance to be heard – and a chance at redemption

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. 

Read more:

• The failures of education in prison are criminal
• This prison theatre project prepares young offenders for life on the outside: ‘Art can be a game changer’
• 2,600 forgotten prisoners left to rot indefinitely under ‘inhumane’ sentences outlawed 12 years ago

Iwaszko’s approach is one of compassion and understanding: “Poverty and lack of prospects are common denominators, it’s often this, however, that makes them aspirational and entrepreneurial  – and makes them such interesting students. 

“Learning how to tell their stories – real or fictional – gives them the chance to be heard and to have a chance at redemption. It has been a privilege to know the humanity of the prisoners that I’ve met.

“While I don’t respect what they’ve done, I can respect them as human beings, and they can sense that. The intervention of art can be so powerful – it really isn’t a waste of time – so many don’t want to reoffend.”

Testimony for Iwaszko’s work comes from an ex-prisoner who told her: “That course changed my life –
I learnt how to express myself with words not with violence.” 

Recent Ministry of Justice figures show that the take up of accredited rehabilitation schemes has fallen
by more than 70% over the last 15 years for many complex reasons.

Overcrowding and a system stretched to breaking point means this is unlikely to change. 

Penned Up provides a compassionate perspective on the issues of rehabilitation and reoffending, a way of seeing and understanding the challenges of prison life – and the potential for personal transformation. 

Penned Up is on tour with a final week at London’s Arcola Theatre from 6-11 October.

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