What follows is an indicative rather than exhaustive selection of materials including academic books, chapters and journal articles that engage with women, theatre and the criminal justice system as well as work, employment and organisation studies.
Websites of artists and theatre companies working with women with experience of the criminal justice system and related advocacy organisations are in Links.
Most recent project publications:
Bartley, S and McAvinchey, C, Dean, D, Greene, AM (in press) 2024: Clean Break Theatre Company: Origins and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Elements Series.
Greene, AM, Dean,D, Bartley, S and McAvinchey, C (2022) Locked up and down: incarceration, care and art in a pandemic. Gender, Work & Organisation 29(4), 1346–1359 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12801
Prison Theatres
Texts specifically about theatre and performance practices with women are noted with *
Texts specifically engaging with Clean Break’s work are noted with **
Abraham, N. and Busby, S. (2015), Celebrating Success: How has Participation in Clean Break’s Theatre Education Programme Contributed to Individual’s Involvement in Professional or Community Arts Practices? London: Central School of Speech and Drama.**
Baim, C., Brooks, S., and A. Mountford (2002), The Geese Theatre Handbook: Drama with Offenders and People at Risk, Hook, Hampshire: Waterside Press.
Balfour. M. (ed.) (2004), Theatre in Prisons: Theory and Practice, Bristol: Intellect.
Bartley, S. (2019), ‘Gendering Welfare Onstage: Acts of Reproductive Labour in Applied Theatre, Contemporary Theatre Review, 29.3: 305-319.**
Berson, J. (2008), “Baring and Bearing Life Behind Bars: Pat Graney’s ‘Keeping the Faith’ Prison Performance Project,” The Drama Review 53 (8): 79-93.*
Clarke, M. (2004), ‘Somebody’s Daughter Theatre: Celebrating Difference with Women in Prison’ in Michael Balfour (ed.), Theatre in Prisons: Theory and Practice, Bristol: Intellect, 101-106.*
Cox, M. (ed.) (1992), Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor: The Actors are Come Hither. The Performance of Tragedy in a Secure Psychiatric Hospital, London: Jessica Kingsley Publisher.
Fraden, R. (1994), Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theatre for Incarcerated Women, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
Gardner, A., Hager, L. and G. Hillman (2014), ‘Prison Arts Resource Project: An Annotated Bibliography’, Washington: National Endowment of the Arts.
Heritage, P. (2002), ‘Stealing Kisses’ in Maria Delgado and Caridad Svich (eds), Theatre in Crises: Performance Manifestos for a New Century, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 166-178.
Herrmann, A. (2009), ‘“The Mothership”: Sustainability and Transformation in the Work of Clean Break’ in S. Preston and T. Prentki (eds), The Applied Theatre Reader, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 328-335.**
Herrmann, A. and McAvinchey, C. with contributions from Lucy Edkins, Jennifer Joseph, TerriAnn Oudjar, Jade Small, Deborah Pearson and Stacey Gregg (2020) ‘Inside Bitch: Clean Break and the ethics of representation of women in the criminal justice system.’ London and New York: Routledge, 100-107. **
Hughes, J. (1998), ‘Resistance and Expression: Working with Women Prisoners and Drama’ in James Thompson (ed.), Prison Theatre: Perspectives and Practices, London: Jessica Kingsley, 231-238.**
Hughes, J. (2005), Doing the Arts Justice: A Review of Research Literature, Practice and Theory, Canterbury: The Unit for The Arts and Offenders.
Lucas, A. and J. Lawson (2011), Razor Wire Women
Lucas, A. (2020), Prison Theatre and the Global Crises of Incarceration, London: Bloomsbury.
McAvinchey, C. (2011), Theatre & Prison. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
McAvinchey, C. (2017), “The Performance of Prison Theatre Practices: Questions of Evidence’. In Reason, M. and Nick Rowe (eds), Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art, 139-154,Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan.
McAvinchey, C. (2020), ‘Clean Break: A Practical Politics of Care’ in A. Stuart Fisher and J. Thompson (eds), Performing Care, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 123-138.**
McAvinchey, C. (2020), “Bad Girls, Monsters and Chicks in Chains: Clean Break’s Disruption of Representations of Women, Crime and Incarceration” in Ashley Lucas (ed.), Prison Theatre and the Global Crises of Incarceration, London: Bloomsbury, 201-212.**
McAvinchey, C. (2020), ‘Something about us’: Clean Break’s Theatre of Necessity’, in Kelly, M. and C. Weston (eds), Prison Writing and the Literary World: Imprisonment, Institutionality and Questions of Literary Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 209-226.**
McAvinchey, C. (2020) Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System. London: Bloomsbury. *
McPhee, M. (2019), ‘Miasmatic Performance: Women and Resistance in Carceral Climates’, Performance Research, 23 (3): 100-111.**
McPhee, M. (2019), ‘I don't know why she's crying': Contagion and Criminality in Clean Break's Dream Pill and Little on the inside’ in F. Walsh (ed.), Theatres of Contagion, PAGES, London: Bloomsbury.**
Scott-Douglass, A. (2007), Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars, London: Continuum.
Thompson, J. (ed.) (1998), Prison theatre: Perspectives and practices, London: Jessica Kingsley Publications.
Trounstine, J. (2004), Shakespeare Behind Bars: One Teacher’s Story of the Power of Drama in Women’s Prison, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.*
Walsh, A. (2015), ‘Staging women in prisons: Clean Break Theatre Company’s dramaturgy of the cage’, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 12: 3: 309-326.**
Walsh, A. (2018), ‘Performing Punishment, Transporting Audiences: Clean Break Theatre Company’s Sweatbox’, Prison Service Journal, 239:22-26.**
Walsh, A. (2019), Prison Cultures: Performance, Resistance, Desire, Bristol, UK and Chicago, USA: Intellect.*
Weaver, L. (2009), ‘Doing Time: A Personal and Practical Account of Performance Work in Prison’ in S. Preston and T. Prentki (eds), The Applied Theatre Reader, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 55-62.*
Young-Jahangeer, M. (2014), ‘Panoptic Spaces, Democratic Places? Unlocking Culture and Sexuality through Popular Performance in Westville Female Correctional Centre, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’ in H. Barnes and M. Coetzee (eds) Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 18-32.*
Young-Jahangeer, M. (2013), ‘Less than a dog’: Interrogating Theatre for Debate in Westville Female Correctional Centre, Durban South Africa’, Research in Drama Education. The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 18 (2): 96 – 200.*
Young-Jahangeer, M. (2011), ‘Acting out HIV/Aids Behind Bars: The Appropriation of Theatre for Social Change in the Renegotiation of Behaviours around HIV/Aids’ in D. Francis (ed.), Acting on HIV: Using Drama to Create Possibilities for Change, Rotterdam: Sense publishers, 103 – 118. *
Selected Publications about Women and the Criminal Justice System
Agozino, B. (1997), Black Women and the Criminal Justice System: Toward the Decolonisation of Victimisation, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Annison, J., Brayford, J. and J. Deering (2015), Women and Criminal Justice: From the Corston Report to Transforming Rehabilitation, Bristol: Policy Press.
Kennedy, H. (1993), Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice, London: Vintage.
Kennedy, H. (2018), Eve was Shamed: How British Justice is Failing Women, London: Chatto and Windus.
McCorkel, J. (2013), Breaking Women: Gender, Race and the New Politics of Imprisonment, New York: New York University Press.
McIvor, G. (ed.) (2004), Women Who Offend, London and New York: Jessica Kingsley Publications.
Moore, L. and P. Scranton (2014), The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sharpe, G. (2012), Offending Girls: Young Women and Youth Justice, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Stern, V. (1998), ASin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World, Boston: Northeastern University.
Women in Prison (2017), The Corston Report 10 Years On: How Far Have We Come on the Road to Reform for Women Affected by the Criminal Justice System? London: Women in Prison.
Selected Policy documents and Research Reports about Women and the Criminal Justice System
(Much of this work has, because of the location of the practice we are examining, a focus on the UK).
Corston, J. (2007), The Corston Report: A Report by Baroness Jean Corston of a Review of Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System, London: Crown Copyright.
Gardner, A., Hager, L. and G. Hillman (2014), ‘Prison Arts Resource Project: An Annotated Bibliography’, Washington: National Endowment of the Arts.
NCP (2011), Unlocking Value: The Economic Benefit of the Arts in Criminal Justice, London: New Philanthropy Capital.