Being Sebastian is a prison story with a difference, as funny and absurd as it is hellish.
Outside the walls of prison, some comedowns last forever… Combining narrative with spoken word (and actually written on K-Wing in Strangeways Prison), Being Sebastian is a prison story with a difference, as funny and absurd as it is hellish. An extraordinary portrayal of the sometimes fatal spiral into madness and drug addiction, as one man struggles to preserve his soul against the emotionless machine of the British Prison System.
There will be a post-show panel after the Tuesday performance, bringing together professional perspectives on the show from the legal, social, police and prison fields.
Post-show Panel: Tuesday 26th September
Sean Cernow (Writer&Performer), Rachel Scott (Projects Director for Drama for TiPP) and Joanna Kay (Psychotherapist) who were involved in the creation process of Being Sebastian will share their own professional perspectives on the show.
The panel will be chaired by Eric Allison, The Guardian’s prison correspondent. Eric Allison has spent some 16 years in prison, during that time he quickly became appalled at the bad treatment of inmates. In 2003 Eric Allison joined the Guardian as the prison correspondent. In 2013, with a colleague, Simon Hattenstone, Eric won the Amnesty International Media Award for investigative journalism.
Joanna Kay worked at Contact as Head of Marketing from 2003 until 2008 where she first read the script for Being Sebastian by Sean Cernow. Now she is an accredited psychotherapist and works both in the NHS and privately she believes young men in particular who are at risk of suicide and depression need ways to express how they feel.
Rachel Scott is Projects Director for Drama for TiPP. Based at the University of Manchester, TiPP are the region’s leading creative organisation working within the Criminal Justice System. Rachel designs and delivers arts based activity in prisons, and works with children, young people, women and men. She also works with people at identified risk of being involved in the Criminal Justice System, including recent work on the Mother and Baby Unit at HMPYOI Styal.
