Emma Thompson helps actors turn spotlight on horrors of sex trafficking

Campaigning: Emma Thompson with Anna Holbek, left, and Shelley Davenport
12 April 2012

Emma Thompson has given more than £20,000 to help a fledgling theatre company expose the sex-trafficking trade.

The star of films from Sense and Sensibility to Nanny McPhee is backing the production, called Fair Trade, which was inspired by her own campaigning work.

The play, which opened for four nights at Rich Mix in east London last night, will have a run at the Edinburgh Festival where it will be seen as "Emma Thompson Presents."

Actress Anna Holbek, 24, who lives in Herne Hill, met Thompson on the set of the Brideshead Revisited remake. Holbek then worked with the actress on an installation in Trafalgar Square of transport containers like those used to smuggle people into the UK. She decided to take the issue further, writing Fair Trade with fellow Shatterbox founder Shelley Davenport.

Thompson said: "It's one of the best scripts I've seen in years. Sex trafficking is a hugely important subject and we need as much art as we can get to help people understand what's going on."

Holbek, who plays an Albanian woman caught in the sex trade, believes it is important to highlight the problem in the run-up to the 2012 Games when it is expected to worsen. "I was shocked at what the women go through," she said.

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