Matt Hewson
Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company (SDTC) has released a new podcast, ‘Miss, It Appears We Have Hit Some Turbulence’, created by and about women in prison.
The four-part series gives an insight into the lives and stories of women in custody at Melbourne’s maximum security prison, the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, where the original stage version of ‘Miss, It Appears We Have Hit Some Turbulence’ ran in 2019.
SDTC, which has been running the ‘Nobody’s Fool Theatre’ program in Geelong for the last six years, has a 40-year history of working with women in prison.
The company’s ongoing drama program for women inmates focuses on devising new works with its participants, giving a voice to the disadvantaged and offering opportunities for insight, discussion and inclusion in society more broadly.
SDTC co-artistic director Kharen Harper said the 2020 lockdowns, which resulted in the cancellation of the company’s live performances, gave rise to the podcast.
“When March 2020 hit we were talking with [Department of] Justice people about bringing the audience numbers back a bit,” Ms Harper said.
“Then a few weeks later we went, maybe we can have 20 people, then it was okay, we’ll do a radio play version.
“So we started working on that, then near the end of July we got a call on the Friday saying we had to do it that day, then we had to be gone.
“We had one window of time, one nine-hour day, to record with the women in custody before Melbourne’s stage four to six lockdowns.”
Ms Harper said work also features additional commentary from formerly incarcerated women who worked previously with SDTC in prison and now post-release.
“We had a group of women who we’d worked with who were on the outside, who had come through the system, and we decided to keep the energy of the creative process going through them,” she said.
“They know how the work gets produced, they’ve performed, and they also know a lot of the themes the play brings to light.”
‘Miss, It Appears We’ve Hit Some Turbulence’ is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Overcast and Podbean.
