The Idiot Colony

“The Idiot Colony” is a new play created and premiering at South Street Arts Centre in Reading. This production brings internationally acclaimed artists to Berkshire for a controversial new play based on real life events.In the 1930’s and 1940’s countless women were committed for decades as “moral defectives”. Their crimes, largely determined by their accusers, ranged from illegitimate pregnancy to lesbianism to anti-social behaviour. Many remained in mental institutions until hospital closures in the late 1980’s. The play tells their story for the first time and is inspired by first-person accounts, interviews with former patients and mental health professionals.

The original inspiration for the play came from a story told by a hairdresser who worked in a salon inside a Midlands Mental Hospital in the 1980’s. She talked about some of the elderly long-term female patients who were in the hospital because they had had illegitimate babies by American GI’s.

South Street plays host to new company Redcape Theatre. Along with two other venues in the Berkshire Consortium, The Corn Exchange in Newbury and Norden Farm in Maidenhead, South Street has supported the development of Redcape’s first show The Idiot Colony. The show was written, devised and directed at South Street during March and April 2007.

Reading based actor Cassie Friend performs alongside Claire Coaché and Rebecca Loukes. Cassie Friend has performed internationally in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Sicily, Romania, Poland and Ireland. She has lived in Reading for the last four years choosing the town as a base from which she can create new work with international artists. She has found the perfect host and producing partner in South StreetAward winning director Andrew Dawson previously brought Pandora 88 to South Street and Thunderbirds F.A.B. the Hexagon Theatre. Andrew says "It has been a real pleasure to have had the support and facilities at South Street Theatre, Reading. I am lucky enough to have worked with 3 very talented performers in creating a work that I believe will resonate in all of us."

The Idiot Colony is written by writer/producer Lisle Turner. Lisle is nominated for a BAFTA and a Rose D’Or for producing The Secret Policeman’s Ball for Channel 4. Lisle says “The Idiot Colony takes a difficult subject and makes it accessible and relevant to everyone. This story is tragic, passionate, shocking and funny – like all the best stories are.”