This play is a fiction tinged with reality because A Woman Inside is also the culmination of two paths. The playwright and director, Sophie Besse, a keen theatre actress, is also a clinical psychologist and worked for five years with female inmates at the Prison for Women in Fleury-Merogis, France. For her casting Sophie has naturally chosen actresses trained in classical theatre but also actresses trained at Clean Break, a London-based theatre and education company working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system.

" I had these women's words but also their silences, their tears, their laughter, their violence, their fragility, their beauty, their pain, their crimes and their wounds. I had prison, its confinement, its dirt, its incessant noises, its eyes following them everywhere, its intrusion within their bodies.

I drew a white square on stage. I put two amazing actresses within it. I locked them up together and the images came to life, so did the lights, the music, and finally their words."  Sophie NL Besse

   Drawing made by Caryn Stanley

   Drawing made by Caryn Stanley