Fringe hit Roadkill returns for tour with new cast

BY RIGHTS, we should have heard no more of Roadkill after its run on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010. This hard-hitting drama about sex trafficking was performed to a tiny audience inside an ordinary rented flat.

Faith Omole as 'Mary' in Roadkill. Picture: Andrew Wilson

It deservedly won a Scotsman Fringe First (the first of many awards), but its site-specific nature would normally have made it impractical to tour.

Such was the public acclaim, however, that it’s still on the road today. Directed by Cora Bissett and scripted by Stef Smith, it has played in private apartments everywhere from Paris to New York. “In my head, it was only ever going to be a little experiment and now it’s been round the world and back,” said Bissett. “It has a slightly different resonance in each place but, rather sadly, the story is the same in any major city you go to.

“It was very interesting taking it to Chicago where trafficking is an enormous problem and there are a lot of organisations fighting against it. There are huge posters saying: ‘If you are paying for sex, you could be paying for a slave.’ Seeing the show, people were still shocked, but they said, having seen the posters around town, it brought everything to life for them.”

Now with a new cast (Faith Omole, Lashana Lynch and Nicky Elliott), it is playing in selected flats in Dunfermline, Dundee and Aberdeen, the everyday nature of each location reminding audiences that women are forced into prostitution not only in far-away big cities but in neighbourhoods near all of us. “Putting it in the public domain is fundamental,” says Bissett. “Even the word ‘trafficking’ wasn’t part of our currency five years ago.”

It’s always hard to know if theatre can change the world, but Roadkill is a play that has made more difference than most. A children’s policy officer at the Scottish Refugee Council had always found it hard to persuade the authorities to treat trafficked women and children as victims, not criminals, even though they frequently had no passports or papers. “Because of the spotlight created by Roadkill, she was inundated by calls which gave her a lot of leverage,” said Bissett, delighted that Scotland is now the first country in the UK to have set up a guardianship service for separated children.

“I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to say one show changes the world, but lots of people acting together can.”

• Roadkill is at Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, today until 14 September; Dundee Rep, 20–25 September; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 2–5 October.