Her Naked Skin

by Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Her Naked Skin will no longer be presented as a play reading for the Midsumma Festival (Jan/Feb 2012) but will be performed as a full production in May/June – full details coming soon.

Suffragette love in female prison

Her Naked Skin was the first play by a woman to be performed on the main stage (Olivier) at London’s National Theatre. The play is set during the initial struggle for women to obtain the right to vote in 1913, after the protest suicide of a woman at the Derby before the outbreak of world war one. This was a time when women from all backgrounds came together for a common cause.

Suffragettes were simply women who refused to continue their lives as invisible citizens. Their protests involved the smashing of windows; however, there was never a human being nor animal harmed through their cause. Nevertheless, many were sent to Holloway Prison, where they lived in the most horrendous circumstances – often being force-fed via tubes that were put into their noses by doctors each time they went on a hunger strike in protest.

The play centres around the lesbian love story between two women, who, under any other circumstance in 1913 Britain, would probably not have met. One is an upper class, middle-aged woman with the title of ‘Lady’, who has nevertheless felt invisible via her female status. The other woman, Eve, is a 24-year-old seamstress. Their love affair comes in the midst of the isolation of prison, and the commonality they share as women, despite coming from opposite ends of the social spectrum.

The play also contains manuscripts from politicians at this time, revealing their fear of the women’s movement.

Her Naked Skin is a brand new play – first performed in 2008, when it received critical acclaim from major British theatre reviewers.