I’ve been banged up, locked up… I’m spending the week in prison. Some might say it was only a matter of time and no more than I deserve. Just throw away the key and leave me to rot. But I haven’t been convicted of any crime. I’m here in Birmingham Central Lock Up working on our theatrical show Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock Up – which is back by popular demand.
My fellow inmates are four wonderful actors plus our director Tim Stimpson. I’ve volunteered to be stage manager. We are once more bringing to life some of the thieves, murderers and police officers who haunt this place. They are a colourful crew – but maybe the real star is the building itself.
Built-in the nineteenth century, this prison is a scary, scary place – three floors of clanging cell doors and echoing walkways. It’s worth the ticket price on its own. Astonishingly it was still in use until three years ago.
A number of my friends have told me they’ve spent a night in here (remind me to mix with a better class of people) although not all of them were stranglers or burglars. One of my respectable friends fell into a diabetic coma on a bus. The police thought she was drunk and locked her up!
Drunks have been regular visitors to these cells. My contribution to Behind Bars is a piece about Tommy Tank, possibly Birmingham’s most notorious drunkard. At one time he was banned from every pub in the city. But come along and he’ll tell you his version of the story – alongside a few other Ghosts of the Lock Up.
Hope you can make it.
BOLDtext Playwrights 