[BLANK], Donmar Warehouse

What happens when a woman goes to prison?

Our fascination with the subject fuels fiction from TV shows Bad Girls and Orange is the New Black to Booker-nominated novel The Mars Room. But it's rare to hear accounts from women who are actually affected by the criminal justice system.

Clean Break theatre company was set up by two women prisoners in 1979 to bring these unseen stories to broader audiences. To mark the 40th anniversary of creating plays exploring the theme of women and crime, Clean Break are working with the West End's Donmar Warehouse to co-produce [BLANK], which gets its first full-length premiere in autumn 2019.

Writer Alice Birch (Most Promising Playwright, 2014) and director Maria Aberg create a 'kaleidoscopic view' of women's experience of incarceration. Instead of linear drama, the play is a series of short scenes showing adults and children affected by the criminal justice system. Some scenes connect to a larger story, others stand alone.

As the title suggests, there's an openness to [BLANK] that enables audiences to build their own narratives. With previous hits including We Want You To Watch (National Theatre) and Ophelias Zimmer (Royal Court), Alice Birch is not a writer to follow convention in form or subject matter.

So prepare yourself for an arresting perspective on the real life issues surrounding gender and imprisonment.

Public booking for [BLANK] at the Donmar Warehouse opens at 9am on Tuesday 16 April