Cardboard Citizens is the UK's only homeless people's professional theatre company, and the leading practitioner of Forum Theatre and the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology in the UK.

History and productions

Cardboard Citizens was founded in 1991 by Adrian Jackson, MBE,[1] in the Cardboard City that had sprung up in what was then called the Bullring in Waterloo as a London Bubble project. For the first four years it toured Forum theatre by homeless people to other homeless people throughout the UK, performing in hostels, day centres, arches, the street and conference centres.

Cardboard Citizens became an independent entity in 1995 and now regularly tours acclaimed Forum Theatre productions written by playwrights including Kae Tempest (Glasshouse), Ali Taylor (Cathy) and Sarah Woods (Meta) across the UK to theatres, prisons, hostels and community venues. It has also mounted a number of critically acclaimed theatre productions in both site-specific locations and as collaborations with other larger organisations, including the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and English National Opera. These have included the Evening Standard Theatre Award-winning Mincemeat, A Few Man Fridays, Pericles and Timon of Athens (both RSC). In 2016, the company staged a Community Ensemble theatrical staging of Ken Loach's Cathy Come Home to mark the film's 50th anniversary and the Theatre Company's 25th anniversary. This Event Theatre work fits with Cardboard Citizens' broader mission of using theatre to ask questions of individual, society and nation, why are things the way they are and how could they be better.

In December 2017, Cardboard Citizens' founder, CEO and Artistic Director Adrian Jackson was awarded an MBE for Services to the Arts in the 2018 New Year Honours list.[2]

Members

Anyone with experience of homelessness or who is vulnerable to homelessness can become a Member of Cardboard Citizens and on average Cardboard Citizens reach 1,500 homeless and at-risk people every year. The free Membership programme offers access to one to one advice, guidance and information, and enables Members to take part in Cardboard Citizens activities, learn new skills in a secure environment with its programmes of performing arts workshops at the Theatre Company's home in Whitechapel, workshops at Crisis Skylight centres and other venues across London.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Adrian Jackson to step down as Artistic Director". Cardboard Citizens. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
  2. ↑ "Cardboard Citizen's Adrian Jackson Awarded MBE – Jerwood Arts". Retrieved 2022-05-24.
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