The award-winning theatre company Cardboard Citizens has announced an ambitious season of new work at The Bunker in London this April. Celebrating 25 years of making work with and for homeless people, the company will continue its exploration of the state of housing in nine new plays commissioned by Cardboard Citizens from some of the UK’s most exciting playwrights.
This timely and playful season, presented in an immersive format, will look back at the history of UK housing, from the Victorian housing crisis through Heathcote Williams’ true story of squatting in the 1970s to the ravages of Rachmanism in the 1950s and white flight in the 21st century.
The nine plays will be split into three Cycles, each Cycle can be seen as a stand-alone production, or alternatively audiences can book discounted multi-Cycle tickets or take part in a theatrical sit in and watch all nine plays in one go. The season runs 17 April to 13 May.
As with all Cardboard Citizens productions, a proportion of tickets for Home Truths will be made available to homeless audiences at £1.
CYCLE ONE
Slummers
by Sonali Bhattacharyya
Polly, 16, clashes with her mother, Ada, against the backdrop of the Victorian housing crisis. Polly is desperate to escape the slums at any cost, but Ada believes the compromises they’d have to make are too high. A story about the ‘deserving poor’ and the obstacles they face, whatever choices they make.
The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency
by Heathcote Williams with Sarah Woods
Squat Now While Stocks Last. In the early 1970s, Heathcote Williams and friends set up an ‘estate agency’ to provide free accommodation for homeless people: A tiny oasis in the capitalist consumerist shit-hole run by bloviating wank-puddles, and the forces of awe and boredom’. This is their story.
Back2back2back
by Stef Smith
Nine months. Two couples. One building. Four people are trying to figure out their futures but with their backs against the breadline everyone is struggling to stay afloat. White flight, fertility and inhospitality are explored in this poetic domestic drama that examines the difference between a house and a home.
CYCLE TWO
The Table
by Lin Coghlan
In the backroom of a house in South London, residents from 2017 and 1919 find themselves struggling with similar challenges – what is home and in order to find one what might one be prepared to sacrifice? Wine is consumed, secrets confronted and the longing for a place to call one’s own unites the people who shared this space a hundred years apart.
Put In The Schwarzes And De-Stat It
by Nessah Muthy
London. 1958. Two women, one black, one white, battle against the ravages of Rachmanism and the ‘other’. Amidst fear, hate, violence and racism war is unleashed on streets of Notting Hill. Will either woman make it home?
Yellow Front Door
by Anders Lustgarten
Michael is one of the lucky ones. He’s got the Right to Buy. The right to choose the colour of his own front door. The right to leave this dreary, dull little life behind and seek adventure. To spread his wings and become the man he always knew he could be. And he can’t wait…
CYCLE THREE
Henrietta
by David Watson
June 1936. In a purgatorial reunion with her late husband Samuel, the philanthropist and social reformer Henrietta Barnett is asked what she would consider her greatest achievement. Her answer lies in NW11 between Golders Green and Finchley. But a trip to the 21st century might just trigger a rude awakening…
Nostalgia
by EV Crowe
Anna’s sick and she knows what she’s got. She tries to tell her husband Martin, who is back from the war, and their friend Abel and then the doctor. She had it before the little place, it got a bit better in the communist squat, then worse again in the pigsty. But no one believes her illness is real, or what it means or that you can die from it.
GRIP
by Chris O’Connell
A series of unforeseen events change 51 year old Lorna’s life irrevocably. When she is diagnosed with terminal cancer, only days afterwards, in a freak timing of events, her landlord announces that he is evicting her and she is plunged into a world she knows nothing of. Benefits, homelessness testing, bidding for social housing.
