Guest Blog: Playwright Ali Taylor On Homelessness and CATHY

Cardboard Citizens are marking their 25th anniversary as a company this year and have a rich history of making ground-breaking and thought provoking theatre. I first worked with them two years ago on another Forum Theatre play, A Matter of Mind, about the effect of the teenage brain on behaviour and how it changes over the course of adolescence. The impact the production had on the teenagers was palpable and I was struck by how the work Cardboard Citizens creates doesn't just transform audience opinion - it changes the actors' lives.

When I was approached to work on Cathy alongside Artistic Director Adrian Jackson, I jumped at the chance. The work I've done previously has been political with a small 'p', but this play would tackle one of the most urgent political issues of the day: the housing crisis.

Watching Ken Loach's seminal piece, Cathy Come Home, back, I was struck by its power, how it revealed the awful cruelty of the housing system in the Sixties, and the complete horror of Cathy's children being ripped away from her in the train station. It's the effect on the children that I think you feel most keenly and, 50 years on, that hasn't dulled.

We set out to meet modern Cathys. We found that homelessness often began with women escaping an abusive relationship or following an eviction due to rent arrears or from a landlord hiking up the rent. As the responsibility for childcare fell overwhelmingly on the women's shoulders, they suddenly found themselves relocated far out of London, away from their support networks of neighbours and friends. They were forced to start all over again, finding new jobs, new schools, new friends.

We heard from parents fighting to keep their children's lives in some sort of stable order. And we saw how the children were affected by having to move schools, having to leave their friends, and having the floor of their world disappear from underneath their feet.

The question in my mind was: who is most affected by homelessness today? And the answer I found is children, and mothers with children. So in Cathy we follow the relationship between a mother and daughter over the course of about 18 months, watching how eviction, relocation and sofa surfing pushes them to breaking point.

We're touring around some areas of the country that are most affected by homelessness - whether that be cities which cannot house their homeless residents or towns taking in those homeless families.

As this is a forum play, the audience will watch the hour-long piece through once and then come back for a second half in which the play will begin again. The audience will be invited to shout 'stop' at a point when they think they could intervene and help Cathy achieve a better outcome. They'll be invited to jump on stage and improvise that conversation. We hope this will encourage a sharing of knowledge that will help people get more power and more hope.

Cathy premieres at Pleasance Islington tonight before embarking on a UK tour

Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography

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