Roadkill

by Stef Smith, Cora Bissett

A powerful and award-winning account of the terrifying complexities of contemporary sex trafficking, based on real experiences. This explosive, multimedia story of a young woman trapped in a living nightmare combines direct, chilling performances with video and animation to create a site-specific experience that is both intimate and immersive.

Genres: Plays

74 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2012

Reviews

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 4 out of 5]

PAINFULLY STRAIGHTFORWARD

The most straightforward play I've ever read. It highlights the chidren trafficking in UK so clearly, that you barely believe it's happening nowadays.

But yes, children are abused, raped and enslaved. Brutally deprived of their innocence.

Based on a true story, this play is meant to be disturbing. The audience (or the reader) should be so shaken, moved and disgusted, to take an active part in the battle against the trafficking.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, rounded down.

Site-specific theatre has always excited me, and this seems particularly provocative. The play starts with the audience being ferreted via bus, where the play begins, as a sweetly wide-eyed 14-year-old young girl, fresh off the plane from Nigeria, extols all the wonderous things about her new home in Scotland. Once the bus reaches its destination of a run-down apartment, the audience is led into Mary's new home - a house of prostitution for trafficked underage girls.

What then proceeds, in a multimedia presentation complete with slides and videos, is Mary's descent into the hell that awaits her. I am sure it doesn't make for a very pleasant night's entertainment and even just reading it was stomach-churning. I'm not sure I could stand to witness it in person though, hence a slightly lower rating than it probably deserves.


https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/...

[Alex Reale · Rating 4 out of 5]

"But every day I add to my story, our story. I am no longer that girl being silently knocked down again and again. I am the woman free from traffic, travelling an unknown road, doing my best to continue, doing my best to exist."

[Callum Morris-Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s an odd one reading site-specific theatre, especially for this piece which was originally conceived as transporting the audience via bus to a flat in Edinburgh where trafficked children are manipulated and forced to work as prostitutes. Although the play’s multimedia, immersive devices inevitably won’t lead to the same effects of empathy and complicity on the page as they would if you travelled alongside the protagonist, Mary, and witnessed her abuse as was intended, this is still a phenomenally harrowing and important drama that sheds light on the unseen world of child sex trafficking and the damaged worlds it creates.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely gripping read. From online accounts the staging of this play looks to be truly remarkable environmental theatre. Very glad to have discovered this Scottish playwright/director/actress/feminist and social activist Cora Bissett.