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Funding for Penned Up National Tour
The Hal Company is delighted to have been awarded a substantial Arts Council grant towards funding a national tour in autumn 2025 of Penned Up. This new play, written by Hal CEO Danusia Iwaszko, set in a men's prison focuses on six inmates joining a writing course which allows them time out of their cells, while seeking to break the emotional chains that bind them. At the development readings across the country the play has been called 'unexpectedly funny', 'moving' and 'emotional'.
Partnering with Synergy Theatre Project - a prison theatre company, SFTW an established London-based production house, and with St Giles Trust, a charity that works with people facing disadvantage including offending backgrounds, the play will tour national theatres across 11 venues and three prisons; to premiere at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds in September.
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CEO and playwright Danusia Iwaszko says: “We are delighted to have received this funding and are hugely grateful to the Arts Council for putting their trust in us. As a newly established charity this allows us to tour a thought-provoking play and be part of a national conversation around the important subject of rehabilitation in prison. It also means that, with support from our sponsors, we can now look ahead to develop plans in the pipeline for future productions.”
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