THE National Theatre of Scotland is to put on its first women-only matinées for its new play about female genital mutilation.

Rites, by the award-winning director and writer Cora Bissett and Manchester-based theatre practitioner Yusra Warsama, examines female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision or cutting.

Rites is based on interviews with young women and girls who have been cut, their mothers who feel the need to carry on the practice, and the health professionals, teachers and others who deal with the consequences.

FGM involves partial or total removal of external female genitalia.

The reasons for it are complicated and differ depending on a number of factors, including which of the African and the Middle East countries where FGM is concentrated the girl has come from or has roots.

Bissett, whose previous work includes the powerful and award-winning Roadkill and Glasgow Girls, hopes the play will fairly and sensitively discuss FGM.

She said: “Theatre is an extremely powerful medium to explore complex stories, put cultural practice under the spotlight and to find sensitive ways of portraying traumatic human experiences.

“Through extensive research and interviews across the UK, with women affected in diverse communities, we are hoping Rites will be a piece of theatre which doesn’t seek to demonise any one culture. We hope to ask questions of practices contained within many cultures and give space to discuss those very sensitive areas where cultural practice and human rights come into direct conflict.”

The theatre company has committed to making the play “accessible to affected parties in each community it plays”, and will invite front-line health workers and other professionals.

Rites will play in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester and London. It marks the National Theatre of Scotland’s first collaboration with Contact, the Manchester-based theatre company.

The company is also working in partnership with the Scottish Refugee Council and Dignity Alert Research Forum.

The World Health Organisation estimates 125 million females alive today have been cut, and most will have had the procedure between infancy and the age of 15. Estimates suggest that around 60,000 girls in the UK are at risk of being forced into FGM.