# 16
Last night I attended the production of The Lost Story of the Magdalen Asylum at the Abbotsford convent.
The play portrays the 19th century inhabitants of the convent, whose nuns took in "fallen" women, such as prostitutes or those with a drinking problem,and put them to work. But the admission price was high. The women lost their names, which were replaced by saints' names. A scene in the play is dubbed "the memory room", where a character struggles to remember her birth name.
The characters are based on real stories printed in the Argus in the 1870s and the presentation includes scenes with puppets, the company's specialty. It is a fusion of history, memory and mythology.
The audience moves through the darkness from one scene to the next, in former laundries and Sacred Heart dormitories which have not previously been open to the public.
I snapped this before I was told taking pics was forbidden!!