Playtext: The Special Relationship

The Special Relationship by Hassan Abdulrazzak
Directed by Esther Baker
Yes I was deported back. Old Trump sent me here. Anything happens to my family, I'm coming across that ocean if I got to come in a tugboat, singing, row, row, row your boat.
A grain of cocaine, a digit on a breathalyser, a forged cheque, a DEA sting or murder one?
In America, foreign nationals can be deported after serving prison sentences. Some of them are British. Caught in the transatlantic tango between Trump and May and proudly presented by a gun-toting Immigration officer, these are their verbatim stories of double punishment and separation from their loved ones.
Hassan Abdulrazzak interviewed ex-prisoners and experts in immigration and criminal law to get behind the political rhetoric and explore the extraordinary realities of people caught up in the quagmire of immigration detention and deportation.
Synergy Theatre Project creates ground-breaking work across theatre and the justice system. Our work includes new plays which are specially commissioned to humanise the stories of those we work with – prisoners, ex-prisoners and young people at risk of offending and to provide new insights into the criminal justice system. THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP was researched in collaboration with Prisoners Abroad, a UK charity supporting British citizens imprisoned overseas and returning to the UK.