Transport of Women by Steve Gooch by the Cie de l’Embellie - Drama comedy.
England, early nineteenth century: the government orders the shipment of the overcrowded female prison to Australia. The crossing lasts six months. The play focuses on the fate of six women, heavily sentenced for relatively minor offenses. They make the crossing chained in a cell in the hold, exposed to the brutality of the crewmen. Despite the oppression, the solitude, the punitive acts, and the tears, laughter manages to break the tension, and a form of brotherhood unites them in the fight for survival. This closed-door play, by turns violent, funny, and disturbing, questions the condition of women, and not only in Queen Victoria's England. Transport of Women is a cry in the desert of the sea, not simply a lament for life and its imprisonment. It is also a glimmer of hope in a world where one could imagine all forms of humanity aborted.
