Lucy Kirkwood’s career in theatre includes a significant residency at Clean Break, an English theatre company that has been collaborating with women in prison since 1979 with the aim to address issues of female criminality within the justice system. Through its various programmes, the company delves into the intersections between the spaces of theatre and the institution of prison, thus giving voice to women who, in diverse theatrical representations, share their experiences of life in prison – in relation to society, life and the legal system. The theatre company firmly highlights that the state judicial system’s attitude towards women is a major indication major that we still live in an unequal society where women are judged according to different standards.

The Welkin is set in 1759 in a small Suffolk village, where a jury of twelve matrons must determine the fate of Sally Poppy, a young woman accused of murdering an eleven-year-old child with her lover’s assistance. The all-female jury must democratically decide on the veracity of Sally’s claimed pregnancy, which, if true, could spare her from the death sentence by hanging.

In the gaps between the historical period when capitalism was established through the enclosure of public land, women’s unpaid domestic work, and the present day, we find key emancipatory questions that still trouble us. The struggle to liberate ourselves from the invisible hand of patriarchy becomes strikingly clear when viewed as imposed contradictions between ‘masculine’ science, ‘masculine’ legal systems, and ‘feminine’ witchcraft. These issues will remain ‘natural’ unless addressed through Marxist class struggle.

Sebastijan Horvat