Sian Owen’s play A Visit premiered in Pontypridd last week, after a four-year creative gestation involving intensive research on its theme of women in the Welsh prison system. South Wales poet and rapper Rufus Mufasa caught a performance, and found it powerful and inspirational enough to share her thoughts with us…
“She’ll be there with all her words and I’ll have nothing!” – Ffi
I haven’t written an article or review in forever, these things have rules and word counts, and I’m using up so many just trying to find a way to tell you about my visit to see A Visit on Friday night in Pontypridd’s YMa. Four years in the making – researching, engaging with services, digging deep, driving forces – this phenomenal play covers so much in an hour and a half, all presented here, in this space.
Finding a way in to finding a way out.
A Visit is a play examining female experiences, the effects of the prison system, and how they affect everyone. Who’s looking after the children if mam gets sent down? Childcare is a core force for all decisions on the outside, including for myself in arranging a schedule to see this play. Which feels minor in comparison to the scenarios unfolding in this fourth-wall immersion, didactically directed, wondrously written frontline feat.
Displacement is a keyword to take away from all this, but the audience were absolutely in the thick of it. Collectively we unpack. Welsh female prisoners will have to serve time in another country, families and children will have to travel harder for visits, relationships are ripped apart and everyone loses. These punishments have huge branches and roots that cause scars deep enough for this stuff to have a transgenerational trauma tax.
With Ffi (played by Siwan Morris) in prison, her sister Carys (Bethan McLean) has had to step up to care for Ffi’s daughter Angharad (Lizzie Caitlin Bennett) while mam serves her time. We will learn, in an later explosion from Ffi, that “I did it for you” has put Carys in an extra-loaded position of guilt, and that the sisters have navigated life without parental support themselves. This has all happened at a time where Carys has new career prospects – leaving a 3 am job at Sainsbury’s to train as cabin crew in Gatwick – and Angharad, who’s already had turbulent experiences with her education, is trying to get through her GCSEs.
Subject matter explored stupendously through geography, this magic maths of methods used for writing the stage. There’s also a magic map maxed up with metaphor, another wonder from A Visit’s writer Sian Owen – the simplicity, the significance, the slam dunk. Maps are viewed as a threat to safety and security in prison.
And throughout the play, there is always the reminder that ways out have consequences. Ffi tries to find a way out and ends up imprisoned. Carys trying to find a way out has consequences for Angharad, who searches for solutions which could put her at risk.
Despite Ffi’s desperate plea, “It’s not about you, me… it’s us!”, there is an undercurrent force to forging your own way, felt by all. Can you even become a matriarch without having gone it alone? We collectively carry so much in silence, dutybound dreads that define us, womanhood a frontline mindfuck.
When Carys is trying to explain to Ffi that because of the circumstances – the glitches, the loopholes – Carys doesn’t qualify for state benefits or other assistance, she walks you through the pressures and the financials: “Four texts, an email and an actual bastard letter, all for £3.75.” I know exactly what she’s talking about. “I went to the benefits office, was told they couldn’t help me, that I had go on to my online account, to be told I had to go into the benefits office.” We know exactly what she’s talking about. And when Angharad says, “You can’t be my mam from in here,” we know we need to talk; to try getting this right.
A Visit’s use of BSL brilliance broke down barriers, championing best practice and integration innovation, but also held me when it became too much, anchored me in a lullaby while I caught my breath. Cathryn McShane and Claire Anderson, ever-present throughout, were both prison officer in the space and also working with the characters. They explained that splitting characters was hard: going from character to prison officer on loop was tense. Emotion is difficult (drop, pick up, drop, pick up), but without that the play would have been too heavy.
Papertrail, the theatre company behind A Visit, have held talks following most of the performances, with social workers, prison workers, writers and directors. I was relieved to see the cast in their own clothing: I don’t think I could have carried some of this stuff out of the space without that, because the play’s script is fact. Papertrail are actively reaching out to decision-makers as audiences. People can talk at the end of the show. People can listen. People can learn.
“Your little girl is gone. You didn’t even say goodbye” – Angharad
Many female prisoners have been part of the care system, were victims of childhood traumas, domestic abuse, are being punished for trying to survive. Only 5% of children affected by their mam going to prison will stay in the family home, keeping generations in chains. The absence of men in the play is not a privilege in reality: these women and their families are being judged by men for what they cannot truly understand, then sent to cruel, crisis-filled spaces while worrying about the crisis at home.
“Is there a worse word than punishment? Messing with actual laws of nature. They don’t let you take bird eggs from nests” – Ffi
One audience member spoke up about a BBC documentary that she had made in 1990 (“still the same story!”), and the most uncomfortable factor in this is the harsher sentencing for women: in the last 30 years, the prison population in England and Wales has doubled. VAWG has been declared a national emergency and my experience of navigating services as a working-class single mother can be brutal and shocking some days.
Just visiting the dentist can be dangerous. Complaining about a workman’s job can put you at risk, Threatened with your life if a man thinks you’re going too slow on a 40 stretch. Microaggression max-out at a school event if you wear the wrong T-shirt… and my privilege is feeling outraged by this, because we are programmed to just accept this stuff. You can’t call things out in a room full of people who rank themselves higher than you. They don’t care about your qualifications or training or experience or rights. That’s outside! How dare we ask for more!
I sat with my friend Trudy to watch the play. We both cried, rolled our eyes at all the things we recognised and huffed through the harder parts. Together. Trudy said “I sat there thinking this is about me! The scrimping, the scraping, the worrying with your eyes closed!” She’s right. This could be any one of us. In that situation. Alone.
So we can ignore and not worry about this broken system stealing time and serving no-one; the decline behind bars and detrimental dives of those left waiting. Just make sure you don’t end up in a scenario you never planned for, treading water in an impossible lake of loss full of lacerating leeches.
We need radical reform in impossible scenarios that needs more than government, policy and police to fix this. A Visit gifts us new ways of navigating these territories. This is beyond a play: it is a toolkit to tackle this, a map that might help us all find a way home.
“It’s scary to be vulnerable, but I have to tell the truth!” – Siwan Morris
A Visit, YMa, Pontypridd, Fri 4 Oct.
words RUFUS MUFASA