Trial at Bolton Council Chamber

TRIAL is a brand new show about sexual violence and the devastating impact of never being believed. TRIAL will be performed in Bolton Council Chamber’s courtroom setting for the Octagon’s 2018 REVEAL Festival.

Four women on trial. Four women who are not believed. TRIAL is a brand new play, written and performed by four female writer/performers, telling real stories of women who have not been believed. The show weaves together multiple women’s stories and includes verbatim court material.

Monkeywood Theatre has brought together an ensemble of 4 female writer/performers, Rosina Carbone, Nisa Cole, Sarah McDonald Hughes and Eve Steele, to make TRIAL and the stories, whilst not autobiographical, have been inspired by real stories. The script has been developed over the course of a year and tested via workshops with community groups in Bolton, including the Octagon’s own youth theatres and adult theatre groups.

Co-Artistic Director, Sarah McDonald Hughes, explains why making this play was so important, “Often, female victims in these cases are portrayed, either directly or by implication, as liars, as untrustworthy, as ‘bad’ citizens. At the time of making the play, it felt like the whole world was contributing material. We would literally discuss something one day, and a news story would break the next, covering the same ground. Whilst this horrified us – the stories themselves – it also galvanized us: we felt like this was absolutely the right play to be making now.”

TRIAL is part of the Octagon’s REVEAL festival, which showcases new work in non-theatre spaces across Bolton, and Monkeywood are thrilled to be part of such a diverse and innovative collection of work.