Dear Jane... you’ve been a kind friend

I created this piece of work because I was interested in the idea of ‘indefinite detention’.

In particular the knowledge that unlike a prison term, there is no end date for detention. It’s indefinite. When you are confined to a detention centre, you have no idea when you will be released. Some people are held for several years. I struggled with the idea that the UK could intentionally detain someone indefinitely.

In creating the performance, I worked closely with William – an ex-detainee, using his own experience seeking asylum in the UK after fleeing war torn Sierra Leone, and the similarity between both journeys - the one in Sierra Leone and the one in the UK.

The script took the form of a moving letter to William’s support worker, his primary contact for the duration of his detention, and explored the different aspects of constraint William had experienced, first in Sierra Leone during the period of former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s involvement in the country and subsequently in the UK as a victim of indefinite detention and, importantly, the impact this constraint had on William.

For me that aspect of his story which resonated loudly was that both experiences similarly left William severely, and in the case of the UK, a first world developed nation, arguably unnecessarily, traumatised.

This performance was created for a small British charity. Their core message to me was, that ‘indefinite detention is immoral’. My struggle was in understanding precisely what this message meant.

Some of the ideas expressed in the work are intentionally shaped to leave the listener with no surety as to William’s outcome.

#indefinitedetention

www.pamelaneil.co.uk