A man runs naked through 19th century Dublin. A woman runs naked through 20th century London. And in the 21st century, it’s too dangerous to ever be naked - someone might take a video.

Imagine no one loves you and you have to leave home with nothing. Shoes? Clothes? Passport? Mooncup?  

Where would you go? Would you feel free? Are you free at all if your ‘choices’ hurt? 
Are you free to hurt others if it stops them hurting you? Will the police believe you, or will they ask, How did you know they would hurt you? (Or is it naïve to believe they’d ask?) 

Before You Say Anything is about the long shadow of 19th century sus laws. You could go back as far as the Georgian Vagrancy Act of 1824; or you could pick up from the Victorian Offences Against The Person Act of 1861, Contagious Diseases Act of 1864, or the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act modifying the act of '61. A series of laws aimed at combatting crime or disease by combating prostitution or buggery by giving the police the power to stop and search on the basis of suspicion. And we know who the police like to suspect: the poor, the queer, the mad, the melanated. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that they were still at it a hundred years later in Toxteth and Brixton. Amongst other places – the year after Black youth rose up, said NO MORE, the English Collective of Prostitutes did the same and occupied a church in King's Cross to protest their treatment by the police – as detailed in Selma James' essay Hookers In The House Of The Lord.

A disease that you catch in a hospital is iatrogenic. Should we borrow it as the name for violence brought about by people claiming to prevent it? Or is there a word for that already? (Is that word just policing?)

MALAPROP were co-commissioned by Dublin Fringe Festival and the Abbey Theatre in the creation of Before You Say Anything.
Supported by the Office of Public Works (OPW) and Dublin Castle. Developed at FRINGE LAB with the support of Dublin Fringe Festival.

Production photos by: Simon Lazewski. Header image: Leon Farrell.