DRAMATIC PODCAST OF DESPERATE MEASURES
Welcome to the audio version of Groomed to Perfection. The story is told by a female over 36 hrs of her life while she navigates the tactics her abuser uses to creatively and coercively control her. Its a story about how human it is to hope we are loveable and to chase that hope. It is about the lengths survivors of domestic abuse will go to in order to do just that; survive, the stigmas that can lead survivors to be judged for some ‘survival behaviours’ and the at higher risk they experience when that judgement isolates them further.
This is definitely a story about women: the complexity of our experience, the expectations on us, our needs consistently being pushed to the side, our love, our anger, our limited choices, our need to laugh in the face of adversity, our infinite resilience and yes our fanny’s.
This story is about governing systems who employ imaginative cruelty to disempower and decimate people, erase choice and abolish freedom.
Groomed to Perfection is also a stage play which was commissioned by Brighton Theatre Royal in 2019 and funded by ACE. The audio ‘sister version’ was born out of performance restrictions that hit everyone during the pandemic and with a second ACE funding award I rewrote it into 14 episodes to tell the story in the audio genre. Of course it evolved into something beyond my initial imagination.
Like all art it does not aim to be perfect. It’s female characters do not aim to be perfect either!
We dedicate this project to every person who has survived intimate partner violence, lived in the invisible cage that is coercive control and jumped through hoops to keep themselves, their family, friends and pets safe. Anyone who has had their sense of self systematically dismantled until they no longer know who they are. Anyone who has been lead to believe someone else knows them better than they know themselves. We also dedicate this project to women owning, building and of course hiding our sense of self: all females. We face daily resistance in the world we navigate.
To anyone in immediate danger please call 999 and for more information see the safeguarding links.
Listen To The First Episode See All Episodes
