Rebel Voices: Monologues for Women by Women
Clean Break is a British theatre company set up in 1979 by two women in prison. It exists to tell the stories of women with experience of the criminal justice system and to transform women’s lives through theatre.
Over 40 years, Clean Break has commissioned some of the most progressive and brilliant women writers to write ground-breaking plays, alongside developing the writing skills of the women they work with in its London studios and in prisons. This is a collection of monologues from this canon.
Rebel Voices: Monologues for Women by Women celebrates the opportunities inherent when women represent themselves. Offering female performers a diverse set of monologues reflecting a range of characters in age, ethnicity and lived experience, the material is drawn from a mix of published and unpublished works.
This book is for any performer who does not see themselves represented in mainstream plays, for lovers of radical women’s theatre and for rebels everywhere who believe that the act of speaking and being heard can create change.
Róisín McBrinn is a theatre director. She became Joint Artistic Director of Clean Break in 2018. Prior to this she was Head of the Artistic Programme since 2014 with responsibility for commissioning and developing writers and artists. She has directed many productions including shows at The Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre (Dublin), West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Donmar Warehouse, Sheffield Theatres, The Bush Theatre and Sherman Theatre.For Clean Break, she has directed Joanne by Deborah Bruce, Theresa Ikoko, Laura Lomas, Chinonyerem Odimba and Ursula Rani Sarma; House by Somalia Seaton; Amongst the Reeds by Chinonyerem Odimba; and Thick as Thieves by Katherine Chandler.
Lauren Mooney is a writer, producer and dramaturg. She joined Clean Break in 2016 and worked as their Literary Producer until autumn 2018, supporting emerging writers and producing the company's engagement work in prisons. Since 2015, she has co-run Kandinsky Theatre Company with director James Yeatman, where her work as producer and co-writer includes Dog Show, Still Ill and Trap Street (all New Diorama Theatre). In 2019, the company’s work will include Dinomania (New Diorama Theatre), There Is a Light that Never Goes Out (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester) and a transfer of their 2018 show Trap Street to the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin. She is a graduate of the Royal Court Introduction to Playwriting course (2015) and has written extensively about theatre, arts and culture for Exeunt, The Stage and The Guardian. She is currently the David Higham Scholar on the Creative Writing MA at University of East Anglia.