17 to 24 June 2000

in the Studio Theatre

w@rn

written & directed by Helen Nelder

Warn against or worn down? w@rn mounts a challenging investigation into the kind of homes where your 'loved ones' are the people who put you in hospital - or worse. Using a variety of techniques - clowning, masks, mulitmedia and poetry - w@rn searches out the dynamic that travesties the safe haven of the traditional family and turns it into a place of fear and trembling.

WARN AGAINST OR WORN DOWN . . . ?

A graphic study of the experiences and consequences of middle-class domestic violence, seeking to explode a variety of myths and assumptions that characterize common perceptions of the issue.

What is it like to be trapped in what is traditionally considered to be a safe haven: the middle-class nuclear family? How does it become a place of terror, brutality and even murder?

A celebration of the power of women to survive and transcend their circumstances, turning the silence of the oppressed into a powerful cry and spitting in the blind eye that society turns on the calculated violence that some men perpetrate on women.