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Text - Land of Eagles Audio Monologues

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Land of Eagles is an audio drama consisting of five monologues written by Alison Porter and recorded remotely by professional actors during the pandemic. Each monologue presents a different perspective (victim/survivor, trafficker, case worker and mother) on the story of an Albanian survivor of human trafficking for the sex trade. The story is based on verbatim testimony and real events provided by the Medaille Trust and Black Country Women's Aid, in the UK and the Mary Ward Loreto Foundation and Arise in Tirana, Albania. The events in the story are real but names have been changed to protect those sharing their stories. The monologues were broadcast in a daily podcast over a week in October 2021 by the Medaille Trust.

In tribunal plays the judge or tribunal chair is able to introduce contextual information and in some verbatim plays a quasi-narrator provides important contextual information for example Vardy v Rooney (Kearney, 2022) uses television reporters, Synergy’s The Special Relationship (Abdulrazzak, 2020) uses an immigration officer as MC, and Alecky Blythe writes herself into Come Out Eli (2014). The creative team experimented with the use of a narrator in the form of the voice of Lekë Dukagjini (a 15th century Albanian Prince and law maker) and a chorus but stylistically these classical approaches clashed with the realism of the monologues. The team also experimented with informational boards and projected images to provide context but these visual mediums, of course, did not work with audio drama. For the Anti-Slavery week podcasts the Medaille Trust used an announcer to introduce each monologue and subject matter experts to provide contextual information rather than a narrator which removed the dramaturgical problem. Later in the process the idea of a contextual installation to frame the podcasts emerged and led to the creation of Artefacts.

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1. Majlinda - The Victim

14:45, Thu 23 Feb 2023

The first monologue tells the story of Majlinda, who is tricked into exploitation in the sex trade by someone claiming to be her boyfriend. This is the story of her journey from Tirana in Albania to the UK. In the Medaille Trust contextual interview about this episode Garry Smith, Chief Executive of Medaille Trust, talks about the 'boyfriend trick' scenario and why it is so common. In the same podcast Alison Porter, writer and director of the monologue series, explains why this project matters so much in current times. 

Elizabeth ‘Lizzie” Schenk – the voice of Majlinda is an English actor and voiceover artist with Swiss heritage. She trained at LAMDA and recently appeared in the ensemble of Good at The Harold Pinter Theatre.

(MP3 format, 3.6 MB)

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