Tess Woodcraft writes:  All over the world women and men are taking part in events to mark the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.   I went to a windswept pavement outside Southall Town Hall in West London to see the play Unspoken –  a collaboration between women activists, Southall Black Sisters, and Giants Theatre Company.  Police sirens, buses, fire engines were all racing past – but this was something we all listened to, engrossed, hanging on every word.

Unspoken is a remarkable piece of street theatre – based on Scheherazade’s 1001 Nights, using the words of survivors of violent relationships, and performed in Punjabi and English. These are not Scheherazade’s stories, rather they are  stories of forced marriage, dowry violence and brutality experienced by women living here in the UK- and the women sang and spoke from the heart, about their fight for survival.

Unspoken is theatre that seeks to break the culture of silence and denial that prevents women from speaking out – the women in Southall were adding their voices to the voices of millions of others around the world in these 16 Days of Activism.

The stage was set by an artwork – a tall figure of a woman made from flotsam and jetsam –  by Lucy Edkins.

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Notes

Pod Academy has carried several podcasts about gender based violence including:

• The economic cost of violence against women
• Interview with Nawal el Sadawi
• Dowry violence in South Asia
• Female Genital Mutilation – findings of a research project in Ethiopia

Tags: Gender based violence, Giants Theatre Company, Southall Black Sisters, Street Theatre, UN 16 Days of Activism on Gender Based Vioence