ABSTRACT
Prison Theatre, and specifically Women's Prison Theatre in South Africa is a new and fragile area of activity. It takes as its narrative the experiences of oppression of the women who workshop the plays. Westville Prison Complex is an urban prison located near one of Durban's more prestigious suburbs. It consists of four prisons: Female Prison, Youth Centre, Medium B - male maximum-security and Medium A - male-minimum security. Many women in prison retain a hardened persona as a survival strategy. Within the area of women and crime, the feminist movement has on the whole been more concerned with women as victims of crime than as victims of criminalisation. Violence against women stems from a need to exert power over the less powerful, in a racist/classist society such as South Africa. Activism in women's prisons in the West has been closely aligned with the feminist movement.
