Historical Context & Staging

Historical Context

📰 The True Story of Verity

Find Me is based on the devastating true story of a young woman using the alias 'Verity Taylor'. At the age of 20, she was a patient in a locked hospital ward. Out of profound frustration, she set fire to a chair.

• Rather than receiving therapeutic help, she was charged with arson.
• She was remanded in custody for 3 months.
• Following a trial at Canterbury Crown Court, she was sentenced to Broadmoor—a high-security psychiatric prison usually reserved for violent, dangerous criminals.

The play highlights the ultimate tragedy of her story: the total criminalization of a mental health crisis.

Social Context

🏥 The 1970s Care System

During the late 1960s and 1970s, society was shifting away from horrific Victorian "asylums," but the system was still deeply flawed. There was a massive lack of understanding regarding conditions we now recognize, such as autism or neurodivergence.

• Lack of Diagnosis: Doctors threw conflicting labels at Verity ("sub-normal," "psychopathic") without offering real solutions.
• Chemical Straitjackets: Instead of therapy, patients were often heavily sedated with powerful drugs like Largactil just to keep them quiet and compliant.
• Institutional Apathy: The system was bureaucratic, cold, and entirely unequipped to support complex behavioural needs, leaving families like the Taylors completely abandoned.

Theatrical Context

🎭 Verbatim Elements

Olwen Wymark wrote the play in 1977 while working as a Writer in Residence at Kingston Polytechnic. She did not invent the dialogue from thin air.

She spent significant time with Verity's parents, conducting in-depth interviews, and was given access to Verity's personal writings. Because Wymark never actually met Verity, the play is explicitly structured to show the story through the eyes of the family. The episodic, fragmented nature of the script directly mirrors the family's chaotic, traumatic memories of trying to cope with an illness they couldn't understand.

Original Staging

🪑 The Orange Tree & Poor Theatre

The play premiered on October 21st, 1977, at the Richmond Fringe Theatre at The Orange Tree. It was an incredibly intimate, claustrophobic space:

• The Space: A small room above a pub, seating just 80 audience members on old church pews.
• In-the-Round: The audience completely surrounded the actors, making them complicit observers to the family's tragedy.
• Jerzy Grotowski's 'Poor Theatre': Wymark was heavily influenced by this style. There was almost no set, minimal costumes, and no complex props. The actors used only five wooden chairs and their own physical/vocal skills to create every environment.