Benefit, Z-Arts, Stretford Road, Manchester, 22–23 April 2015 (also shown at the Lantern Theatre, Liverpool, 16–17 April and St Helens Library, 24 April)
With less than two weeks to go until the UK general election, and the welfare state high on the agenda, Benefit is a newsworthy piece of theatre that portrays how the changes made to the benefit system in the past five years have affected ordinary people, with often shocking and heartbreaking results. Produced by Cardboard Citizens, the UK’s leading practitioners of the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology, who have been making theatre with and for homeless people for the past twenty years, the play gives voice not only to the characters portrayed but also to the actors and the audience. Benefit utilizes the techniques of Forum Theatre, which was created by the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal as part of his Theatre of the Oppressed – using theatre as a means to promote social and political change.
We were welcomed by the highly skilled and quick thinking Terry O’Leary, who played the Facilitator/Joker, and told to be prepared for a new experience of theatre, warned of strong language, and assured that the stories related were taken from testimonies and news stories from a variety of national newspapers, sources for which were included at the end of the programme.
The play is divided into three parts. Part 1 centres on the story of Rosa, played by Carly-Jayne Hutchinson. Rosa is a recent graduate who is struggling to find a job while avoiding the trappings of the absurd and distressing cycle of sanctions, in which a claimant’s welfare payment can be suspended for the most unfair reasons (read more about that here: http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-11-most-senseless-benefit-sanction-decisions-known-to-man–x1dmkd2_Me). The play begins at a compulsory CV-writing workshop at the job centre – the set a brightly lit, white box reminiscent of the fluorescent lights found in such institutions – where all four actors are together onstage: Emma Deegan plays the patronising teacher who reminds them: ‘You’re a product!’, and tries to steer Rosa into unsuitable work; Mark Lockyer plays Craig, a victim of the zero-hour contract and the focus of Part 2; and Herman Stevens plays Patrick, the focus of Part 3, who is struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness while trying to dictate the Kafkaesque system in which he has found himself.
Though the central character of each part changes, most of the scenes, scenarios and ancillary characters remain the same, which, as well as showing the same events from three different perspectives also serves to remind the audience of the characters’ tedious, frustrating and demoralising routines. In the food bank scene, where each of the characters queues with their vouchers, shamefaced and depressed, the organiser tells them her greatest wish is to see the centre shut down because there is no longer need for it; having this same scene featured in the next two sections serves to emphasise the lack of improvement so hoped for.
Signalled by a bell to indicate a new story, Part 2 focuses on Craig, whose relationship is breaking down due to the pressure of an undermining zero-hour contract that has led Craig to seek empowerment through watching porn – described by his frustrated yet loving girlfriend as ‘capitalism with its cock out’. That Craig watches porn featuring violence against women suggests he has been emasculated and victimised by the system, suggesting such ills are a symptom of an unhealthy society. His girlfriend eventually moves out due to Craig’s emotional withdrawal and defeatism brought on by damaged self-esteem, and as a result he finds himself victim of the bedroom tax and ends up homeless – ‘Private landlords don’t take tenants on zero-hours contracts’ – with uncertain prospects of being eligible for benefits, as he left his two-shifts-a-week job voluntarily.
Throughout the first half there are intermittent narrations of real-life cases given by the actors. For example, ‘Did you hear the one about the blind woman who was injured on the way to the job centre and had to go to hospital? She was sanctioned for missing her PIP appointment’. Atos, the firm that assessed whether disabled claimants were fit to work, has been heavily criticized since it was introduced to reassess claimants in 2011. Thankfully its contract was ended early this year, due to ‘fundamental flaws’ in the testing procedure, and these flaws are made evident in Part 3, when we witness Patrick undergoing a PIP (Personal Independent Payment) test on the basis of his capacity to work.
Patrick hears voices. Sometimes, ‘on a good day’, he will hear clearly and understand what is being said by those around him, but on a bad day he will hear gobbledygook words, such as when his GP says to him after a consultation about his prescription for his ineffective anti-anxiety medication, that ‘Just having somewhere to turtle can be a grave hell’. Such is Patrick’s confusion that he is unable to clearly express himself, and thus the true extent of his illness goes unnoticed. These nonsense words are cleverly weaved into the ordinary dialogue that we had already witnessed in the first two sections, and effectively show how differently Patrick experiences the world. It is also made clear why he showed such confusion and made so many irrelevant remarks during the first two sections, when we as the audience did not know about his condition. This served to induce empathy as well as sympathy; and with the nuances of his illness made manifest, sometimes humorously so though never gratuitous or exploitative, the writer Sarah Woods avoided presenting Patrick in a stereotypical way. His story ends at the swimming pool, where his anxiety and paranoia reach unmanageable levels and he attempts to drown himself, calling around for help from confused bystanders, ending by looking at the audience.
Having been prepped by the Facilitator that in the second half we would be asked to suggest changes that could be made to one of the characters’ stories in order to improve their situation, during the interval my friend and I began a discussion with the woman who’d been sitting next to us in the audience. This in itself was a novel experience and one into which we did not feel coerced, because the play had been so engaging and the characters written and played so well. We were glad of the opportunity to express our views, admitting the complexity of the characters’ situations while considering what we would do in their shoes.
The second half was great fun and for me a completely new experience, eye-opening in terms of the potential for theatre to be interactive and expand political and social awareness, both through what we witnessed onstage as well as what we, as the audience, learnt from each other as we began a dialogue with the Facilitator. The result was an exchange of personal experiences and individual interpretations of the stories which also brought to light new information on the subject matter.
It was cast to a vote which of the three characters would be revisited in order to try to improve their situation. Patrick was the chosen one, and the audience was then asked to suggest which scene to revisit first, and what to change. It was suggested that a friend of Patrick’s – ‘where did he meet this friend?’ the Facilitator asks for veracity, ‘At the swimming club,’ someone suggests – to accompany him to the doctor’s surgery and PIP interview (the Facilitator was quick to point out that it was unlikely he’d be allowed to take a friend into the CV-writing workshop).
The actors would then gather to play the chosen scenes again, verbatim, until an audience member shouted ‘Stop!’, a technique devised by Augusto Boal known as ‘simultaneous dramaturgy’, allowing an audience member to stop and revise a scene in which a character is being oppressed somehow. The audience member is then asked to take the place of one of the characters and play them differently (this is encouraged but not enforced – a suggestion will do for the shyer among the audience!). In our case, a friend named Dave was introduced as an intermediary who made sure Patrick was truly understanding the PIP interviewer’s questions, and communicating his condition clearly to the doctor. Terry, the Facilitator, was highly competent in stopping the action onstage to question what was happening and ask the audience whether the change was helping or hindering Patrick – such as when Dave behaves aggressively towards the interviewer who then places a sanction on Patrick, thus making his situation worse. Terry reminded us that the interviewer would be tricksy, as job centre workers are often given targets to meet per day with the ultimate aim of getting people off benefits, no matter what. She would also sometimes suggest new directions, ensuring all the action was grounded in what would be realistically possible given the circumstances.
What made it all particularly engaging and poignant was that Terry wanted to make sure that when an audience member suggested somewhere Patrick could turn to for help, that they were suggesting a real place in Manchester. For instance, an audience member mentioned the mental health crisis centre Safire: http://www.mhsc.nhs.uk/services/help-in-a-crisis/swift-assessment-for-the-immediate-resolution-of-emergencies-%28safire%29.aspx. Terry also warned us that the actors might not follow our suggestions exactly, remaining true to their character’s perspective, which had the aim of encouraging the audience to fight harder and think more carefully about how to make their vision for a better outcome a reality. At the end of the mostly successful alterations, Terry asked us to jump two years ahead to a special occasion – a birthday party. The actors gathered onstage and we saw a new Patrick who had been given the correct medication and had thus been able to go back to work and get himself a girlfriend, giving Patrick’s story the happy ending that was missed during the first half.
The writing by Sarah Woods was excellent, using unpretentious, pared-down language and a highly original, clever and believable script. None of the actors could be faulted, each playing their vulnerable character with great empathy and respect, and showing remarkable improvisation skills. All four were usually active, even when offstage, through innovative techniques such as during the scene when Rosa speaks to her brother and his voice is intermittently taken up by the other three actors, making manifest the pressures of multiple voices telling Rosa what to do; also in the scene in which Rosa calls the job centre, her exasperation with the bureaucratic system ours when she is told she can appeal her sanction, but not until a decision has be made as to whether she has been sanctioned or not – right now her ‘status is on referral’; that is, her payments have been suspended but she cannot request an appeal until she has definitely been sanctioned, and thus she could be without income for weeks.
After the show we spoke a little with a Cardboard Citizens workshop teacher based in London, who told us they primarily consider Forum Theatre as a movement towards social revolution. I was surprised to learn that though Cardboard Citizens sometimes hires professional actors, often its paid actors have come to the profession through the free workshops offered to homeless and marginalised people. Cardboard Citizens are doing amazing work. Follow them on Twitter @CardboardCitz.
Emma Rhys