Poison Pen
Klank recalls the real-life transfer of women to a federal prison for men
BY Marilyn Carpenter
Although playwright Araxi Arslanian’s new work, Klank, features an all-woman cast in what she describes as a mix of live-action poetry and dance, all resemblances to Chicago end there. “What I wanted to do was see if I could write a rock ’n’ roll, blow-out piece of theatre with no guys in it, without making it Reservoir Dogs,” explains Arslanian.
Klank, which premieres the second week of March as part of Toronto’s Hatch Festival for emerging performance pieces, is fictional but was inspired by events that took place at Kingston Penitentiary’s Prison for Women. In 1994, two weeks after the release of security footage showing an all-male riot squad stripping female prisoners (many of whom had a history of sexual abuse), six of the prisoners were transferred to the nearby prison for men and held in solitary confinement there because the segregations cells at the women’s prison had not been completed.
Although a report prepared by the Correctional Services of Canada five years later ordered an end to the incarceration of women inmates in prisons for men, Arslanian’s play recalls the event and delves into its political and dramatic implications. “Writing this play has really shed some light under the covers, and sometimes you don’t want to see what’s there,” she says.
Performed by the Babes in Chains Collective, the story revolves around a group of high-risk inmates in the crumbling Tufton Maximum Security Penitentiary. The play exposes not only the relationships between prisoners and guards but society’s attitudes toward them. “There’s a special kind of venom reserved for women who commit crime,” says Arslanian. “It’s easier to believe that a black woman or a native woman is a monster, and that groups of girls are potential murderers.”
To get that idea across, Arslanian took special care in casting the actors in 20-odd roles. “None of the women in my show are Uma Thurman-esque, leggy nymphomaniacs. These are women who have had to fight every day of their lives, who have got a lot of edge to them,” she says, making it a safe bet the Babes in Chains would knock Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart right out of their fishnets.
