Rebecca Manley has the inside story on prison life in These Walls at York Castle Museum

REBECCA Manley's new play These Walls brings to life the history of the Debtors’ Prison at York Castle Museum and the people who lived, worked and died there.

The play will be performed by the York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre 14-16s in and around the prison from today to Saturday (March 15 to 17), with three groups performing one night each under the direction of Julian Ollive, Paula Clark and Matthew Harper-Hardcastle.

Each ensemble cast will lead the audience through the prison, animating the spaces, giving breath to the stories held in the fabric of these old walls. As they move through time and location, the audience members will take part as witness, onlooker, gallows mob, new inmate and gaoler’s guest, even being invited in – for a fee – to drink with notorious felon Dick Turpin.

These Walls looks again at the people behind the broadsheet headlines, the characters within the lines of the gallows ballads and gives voice for the first time to some of the unheard, unseen, forgotten.

Manley focuses on the female voice, exploring the women who lived, worked and were incarcerated there, and these lesser known and less notorious stories create the backbone of the narrative.

"Through meeting these characters up close, we begin to question assumptions about criminality, about who imposes judgment and about the nature of punishment," says director Julian Ollive. "As we do, our attention is drawn to how we think about crime in contemporary Britain, how we understand the whys and hows of criminality, and the contingencies and contexts of justice. As ghosts released momentarily from their eternal prison, the characters are free at last, to wander the building and to share their secrets with us."

Keighley-born writer, actor and teacher Rebecca Manley, who lives in Brighton, has worked with women in prisons and secure settings for the Clean Break Theatre Company, and it was this work that led a friend of Rebecca to draw her attention to an advert about a writer being sought for this theatre project.

"My friend said, 'you do a lot of youth theatre writing and you write about prison life, working with Clean Break', look at this advert," recalls Rebecca. "I also like doing site-specific work, and as soon as I was offered the writing job last autumn, I came up the next week, met everyone and looked at the debtors' prison.

"That's where the title These Walls came from, thinking about the stories those walls would have heard, and thinking about the exercise yard too. I also had a brilliant person called 'M' at the Castle Museum who sent me so much research material to look at, which I then followed up at the British Library at St Pancras."

All of the prisoners featured in These Walls are based on real people. "Most of the material is fairly accurate, but the meetings between prisoners involve dramatic licence, thinking hpw interesting it would be for this person to meet that person," says Rebecca, "The play is set mainly at the end of 18th/beginning of the 19th century, but we also take a leap through time because there are some characters we couldn't resist having in it, like Dick Turpin, who lived a century earlier but is such a colourful character. Debtors, at the bottom of the pile, would have been nine to a room, whereas Dick Turpin would have had a cell to himself.

"There were a lot of mental health issues that would not have been diagnosed at that time, but they're still not diagnosed now and the prisoners don't get help."

Rebecca is, as ever, enjoying working with a youth theatre company, having been commissioned three times previously by the National Youth Theatre for productions at the Lowry in Salford, Latitude Festival, Soho Theatre and the Arcola. "I never cease to be amazed by the openness of youth theatre actors," she says. "They are so open and articulate; younger actors are very brave, very energetic, and people who haven't worked with them often underestimate what they can do."

York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre 14-16s presents These Walls, York Castle Museum, today until Saturday (March 15 to 17), 6.30pm and 8.30pm each night. Tickets: £8, children £6, on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Please note, performances take place partly outside, so audiences are advised to dress for all weathers.