Output details

Story of a Rude Gal

- Script for Radio Play

Story of a Rude Gal was commissioned for BBC Radio 3’s The Wire slot, which showcases work pushing the boundaries of drama and narrative. This work developed within the context of my practice as a writer in residence in a high security prison, and relates to my other research in terms of the issues of representation it explores, where Others are both (re)presented and obscured or complicated in the telling.

The form itself (radio drama) offers a particularly apt arena in which to explore notions of subjectivity: here the listener confronts unseen, shifting subjectivities. The piece pushes the boundaries of the form by framing the narrative with a factual introduction that emphasizes another narrative, the real-world context in which it was written. Here the contextualising narrative prior to the fictional one points towards the possibility of fictional and real-world Others inhabiting the same interpretive space for the listener.

Unusually, the play utilises the particular context in which it was written (inspired by real-world women in prison, in particular one young woman who is described briefly in the introduction but remains unnamed and unheard) to attempt to recognize a real-world Other shut away from society; it explores how the real-world Other may hinted at but not encapsulated in the interplay between the fictional narrative and the contextualizing introduction preceding it. In doing so I attempted to offer a potential meeting with the Other in 'a Threshold between two worlds' (Luce Irigaray). This dramatic piece explored how a fictional narrative may spill beyond the bounds of that narrative, to hint at the realities of non-fictional, real-world Others.

The work is presented in two tracks that form the full item; my original introduction and the play itself.