The Warwick students tackling homelessness through theatre

When I walk into the Avon drama studio, the cast and directors of Root are enthralled in their rehearsal. The scene they are working on contrasts a struggling mother trying to comfort and reassure her child with two homeless people sleeping on the street – it is a cruel foreshadowing of what is to come.

Just from watching these few moments of their rehearsal, I already felt empathy. It was immediately evident to me that Root is going to be a highly emotive piece, but talking to the directors and cast only made that more clear.

The reality of homelessness is that it happens so easily in the blink of an eye

Francesca Robson

Francesca Robson, who is co-directing alongside Nicole De Barra, explained to me: “It’s very visceral and raw, and the way that we get empathy is by talking about things that happen everyday. So we’re talking about the love between a mother and a child, friendships, school – we’re talking about when things go wrong. The reality of homelessness is that it happens so easily in the blink of an eye, and people just think that it’s because of drugs or violence. That’s why it’s going to be so affecting: because the audience will sit there and think ‘that could be me’. That’s where we’re going to get the empathy.”

I was interested to know what inspired this project, and mentioned that it sounded vaguely similar to the Theatre Studies’ Theatre in the Community module. Nicole confirmed this, saying: “Essentially through that I then did a dissertation on theatre in prisons. It made me think that there are so many communities that we’re just not engaging with, and homelessness is so prevalent in Leamington specifically. Everyone that lives there knows about it, and we talk about it, but there’s still an ignorance to it, and it’s rarely really delved into. That was the really the inspiration for the piece – that ignorance.”

Francesca clearly shares Nicole’s alarm for this issue, stating: “Nationally, homelessness is absolutely creeping up – it’s very cyclical. The issue is that people don’t know how to speak about it, because they’ve never experienced it.”

They’re seen as immaculate conceptions and people that we can’t relate to

Nicole De Barra

They decided to tackle this problem head on, as Nicole explains to me: “The show is working in partnership with a homelessness charity in Leamington called The Way Ahead Project. We’re working with them as a weekly residency, and we go in with the cast and crew and listen to these homeless people’s stories.

“As opposed to the singular narrative of one person becoming homeless, instead it’s lots of different things that we, as students, are ignorant to. So discussing how we don’t see them as human. They’re seen as immaculate conceptions and people that we can’t really relate to. It’s about breaking down that barrier.”

Francesca continues: “This is so important because we’re making these people human, so we’re showing things before homelessness, like right now, we’re working on a scene of tucking them into bed. It’s important that we… build that bridge between our community and their’s. We need to knock down that fear that we’ve built up around the homeless community.”

I mentioned to the cast (Germaine Palfrey, Jana Aizupe, Lauren Baulch and Alice Eve) that being involved in a project like this must be quite daunting. I know that, personally, I would fear my ability to take on a role without causing offence, but the cast are clearly confident in their ability to do justice to the issue: “I think there is that question of what gives us the right to talk about this issue, but we’re going into the homeless shelter, so we can take that first-hand knowledge and reinforce it,” Lauren explains to me.

Germaine adds: “I think the way the directors are going about it means that we are being respectful and getting real stories.” Lauren confirms this, saying: “For every scene, there’s a reason we have that scene there. Actions aren’t just thrown in for aesthetics. Everything comes with a reason and motivation, and an association with homelessness.”

Everything comes with a reason and motivation, and an association with homelessness

Lauren Baulch

The question around the morality of the project was one that the directors initially shared. Nicole explained: “When we were first speaking with people here [at Warwick] about the project, they were generally very scared to approach it as a subject, mainly because they don’t know what they can do to help it. I definitely felt like that too. I remember when we first approached this, I said to Frankie: ‘If we go into a shelter once a week for a period of ten weeks, we’re then going to come out, and we’re fine, so is that a selfish process?’ That was something that I was conscious of.

The team hope to connect the homeless community with the theatre’s audience in a way that can evoke real change. “We fortunately have the platform of theatre, a platform that people listen to and engage with, so in my eyes, we get to use this thing that we love to talk about something that other people don’t understand. So it’s a process of social change, and I think that’s really important.”

Jana adds: “Most of us live in Leamington, so you see homeless people there all the time, and as Frankie always says, do you say hi to them? Why is there this social stigma about helping them? I think the most important thing is to raise awareness, to make the audience ask themselves: why am I not helping?”

This is clearly a sentiment that the rest of the team share, as Lauren explains: “We need to realise that these people are human and they’re just like us, they had childhoods – whatever those were – but they had them. We could all be victims of homelessness, no matter who we are.”

“Like Jana said, it’s about self-reflection. People shouldn’t walk away feeling like they do nothing, but feeling like if they do one more thing, that could help. Go to the shelter – don’t just give money, because that’s not always the best solution – but just have a conversation with someone who’s homeless. Frankie always says that can help them as well, because they’re so bored in the day. I think the main thing is just to get rid of the stigma,” Germaine adds.

We’ve built up this wall between our communities

Francesca Robson

Francesca concludes our discussion with a powerful statement: “We’ve built up this wall between our communities, which shouldn’t be there, because we’re all human, and we’ve all had experiences that are very similar. I really want the audience to take away this idea that, although you might think there’s not much you can do, you really can. The fear doesn’t need to be there – they’re not grotesque, they’re not dirty. A lot of what the newspapers talk about just links them with drugs, gangs, robbing and fake homelessness. Of course, those are real problems, but we’ve built these preconceptions, and we fit every single homeless person into that image – it’s wrong. It needs to be deconstructed, and we need to start building bridges between our communities.”

Journey Theatre Company and Codpiece will be performing Root at the Avon Drama studio from June 15 to 17. Tickets are available here.