Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company

Albert Park-based Somebody's Daughter Theatre creates original productions with women in prison, post-release and young people in secure welfare across Victoria.

Somebody's Daughter Theatre began in 1980 when founder Maud Clark brought a play into Fairlea Women's Prison, and the company has been making theatre with marginalised Victorians ever since. Based in Albert Park, just south of South Melbourne, the company works with women in prison and post-release, young people in secure welfare, and rural communities through its Geelong and Wodonga programs, using drama and community arts to give people who are rarely heard a genuine voice.

Somebody's Daughter Theatre Company traces its beginnings back to 1980, when Maud Clark, then a drama student at the Victorian College of the Arts, began running theatre workshops inside Fairlea Women's Prison. What started as a single production grew into an ongoing practice, and more than four decades on, the company is still built around the same idea: using drama and community arts to work with people whose voices are usually left out of public life. The company's core program remains its work with women in prison and, since 1990, women post-release, helping participants build confidence, process experience and create original performance work. A youth-focused strand works with young men and women in secure welfare, while regional programs in Geelong and Wodonga extend the same community arts approach to marginalised young people outside Melbourne. Somebody's Daughter Theatre is based in Albert Park, just south of the South Melbourne shopping strip, and operates as a registered charity supported by government partners and private donors. Its productions, workshops and digital resources are the visible output of a much longer relationship-building process, and the company continues to describe its work as using the arts as an equaliser in spaces where very little else is.

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