Transport of Women by Steve Gooch, performed by the Compagnie de l’Embellie - Dramatic Comedy
Early 19th-century England: the government orders the shipment of overcrowded female prisoners to Australia. The crossing lasts six months. The play focuses on the fate of six women, harshly sentenced for relatively minor offenses. They make the crossing chained in a cell deep in the ship's hold, subjected to the brutality of the crew. Despite the oppression, the solitude, the punitive acts, and the tears, laughter manages to break the tension, and a form of sisterhood unites them in the struggle for survival. This claustrophobic drama, by turns violent, funny, and disturbing, questions the condition reserved for women, and not only in Victorian England. "Transport of Women" is a cry in the wilderness of the sea, not simply a lament for life and its imprisonment. It is also a glimmer of hope in a world where one might imagine all forms of humanity to be aborted.
