Roadkill was conceived and directed by Cora Bissett and written by Stef Smith. The first performance was at the Tron in Glasgow in June 2010.
Roadkill is a site-specific play, taking the audience on a journey by bus to a flat where the realities of human sex trafficking are revealed. MARTHA has ‘bought’ thirteen-year-old Mary from her family in Nigeria to be ‘educated’ in England. Mary soon learns that her ‘education’ consists of servicing men who visit their flat. She becomes pregnant and MARTHA wants her to have an abortion before Djall, ‘The Boss’, finds out about it. Mary refuses so MARTHA reveals her own story: she too is a victim of the African trafficking trade.
You have no idea what you are doing. If you leave right now you will kill your baby Mary. You will see it curl up and die in your own hands. You will see its beautiful brown eyes fill with tears. You will feel its tiny cold hands let go of yours. You have no idea. I watched my own sister die Mary! And she looked so like you. Maybe that’s why I liked you. Eh! How foolish of me… Foluke was so much more beautiful. But she wasn’t strong. She was not used to such force, such…frequency. By the end she couldn’t even remember her own name. She sat and rocked and rocked, and screamed and screamed, hitting her head off the wall until it bled. Saliva just dripped down in a single string. No man would ever want her. So I had to do her men too. I had to do double. I had to keep her safe… I used to sing her songs like a child. It was only a matter of time before they would take her away. I went in to give her some chocolate – she smelt of shit and piss and she had torn out huge clumps of her hair…and she was praying. Those beautiful brown eyes. She fell asleep in my arms, I lay her down and I put a pillow over her face. I held her in my arms and she was peaceful Mary. Like a child. Like the sister I used to know, before I made this all happen… They had already taken so much from her at least she died beside me, she died with dignity.