Madame Geneva: A tale of gin & prostitution (360G-Wellcome-206582_Z_17_Z)

Macha Productions seeks to stage Madame Geneva, a bawdy song and dance, set in 18th Century London where performance, baroque, folk, contemporary music, professional and community actors all meet over a bottle of gin. Madame Geneva, the popular name for gin, lands with the Dutch armies of William of Orange, almost immediately invoking a gloriously decadent atmosphere across the classes. Sold at the corner-shop she offers the poor, particularly women, easy-access to alcohol. The Government struggles to find a way to reap rewards from gin taxes whilst trying to alienate lower classes from imbibing. To this end, Madame Geneva’s gin-addled image is tied to fallen women, fishwives and bad mothers, in turn this influences the establishment of the Magdalen Penitentiary, where approaches to the reform of fallen women institutionalize narratives of good and bad women. These moral narratives often underpin current approaches to women, poverty, addiction, public health and social policy. Working with trainee-actor participants from some of Northern Irelands most deprived communities and Dr Anne Campbell, Macha productions professional team will premiere Madame Geneva at Lyric Theatre, Belfast, to provoke awareness, debate and media coverage on the rising tide of addiction that rampages through Northern Ireland’s post-conflict society.