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Recoverist Theatre Project

Participants from the original Recoverist Theatre Project performing their devised piece Who Am I? at The Florrie Community Centre, Toxteth, Liverpool 8, June 2017. (Backdrop artwork by artist Jamie Reid. Photograph used with his permission.)

Recoverist Theatre Project is an applied theatre-based project which aims to give a platform to participants to voice experiences of addiction and recovery. Inspired by The Recoverist Manifesto, which reframes addiction as a ‘health issue and recovery as a civil rights concern’ (Dibbits 2015), RTP marks the transition of refocusing recovery using an activist lens – actively engaging with theatre to explore and challenge the social justice issues relating to addiction and recovery.

The original project was created as part of my MA in Applied Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2017 and received funding from Leverhulme. Leverhulme Funding for Applied Theatre student projects | The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (cssd.ac.uk) The project was run in conjunction with Action on Addiction based at The Brink in Liverpool, the UK's first 'dry bar' and creative centre, to work alongside adults in recovery.

 

 

Inside The Brink, Parr Street, Liverpool, the UK's first 'dry bar' & creative space for adults in recovery and their families.

The original project used practices such as improvisation, devising and writing techniques to enable participants to creatively explore issues they faced during addiction and in their subsequent recovery journey. This culminated in a devised performance piece, Who Am I, shown to a small invited audience at The Florrie Community Centre in Liverpool.

Recoverist Theatre Project was inspired by A Recoverist Manifesto (PDF)

Read A Recoverist Manifesto (PDF).

Watch A Recoverist Manifesto (Part 1) on YouTube.

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Participant Images & Feedback

Participant in rehearsals as 'Label', a comic character created to voice experiences of her addiction & recovery journey.

I found it a cathartic experience. It helped me get my thoughts together about my identity, who I am, where I’m coming from. Not sure when that happened in the project, it just did. When we were ‘confronted’ with writing a monologue – it was very personal for me. That monologue was about me. I wanted to distance myself from it by creating that character but it was all about me.

Participant

I have found the whole approach really helpful – it’s been therapeutic for me. I wanted to do it. I wanted to say those words. I’m going out of the house more, a lot more. It’s changed my way of thinking. I feel much more positive and not so concerned about what other people think. I got a lot from the process. (Participant)

The writing exercise really opened me up. It gave me a new release. I realized that creativity has to be in someone’s life with addiction’.

(Participant)

Creative writing exercises & writing 'rites' were used to generate material.

I fulfilled a childhood nightmare. Thought it would all fall to pieces, there would be a crunch point. But there was a different outcome – I fulfilled something. There was a different outcome with this. I really got into it, the feeling. Especially using my own work, expressing what came from me. There’s something special about that.

(Participant)

The group created an A-Z of Recovery to focus on the various stages of addiction & recovery.
'Propaganda Man' one of the characters created after generating material for dialogue.

It became like a sort of forum, about the subject, which was recovery. We were four different manifestations of what it was and was to be like in recovery. Also, we were learning ‘hands-on’ of what is actually involved in making theatre as an art-form. It was transformed into a show. It ‘healed us’ by becoming part of a show. It transformed the emotional and political state before we went into recovery. It changed it into something positive and progressive and useful.’

(Participant)

All three participants who completed Recoverist Theatre Project were invited to join Transistions group with Collective Encounters in Liverpool and within six months performed with the company in their professional production of Cracked at Liverpool Everyman Theatre, with one of the participants being cast in the lead role. Another of the participants went on to continue working with Fallen Angels Dance Theatrewho work with dance with adults in recovery, as well as playing the lead in a feature film with First Take Films, Liverpool. The third participant started studying for a BA Hons in Applied Theatre at LIPA.

With the participants outside The Brink, after the showing of Who Am I? Liverpool, 2017.

In 2019 I presented a paper about the project From Being in Recovery to becoming a Recoverist at the Recovery and the Arts Conference, organised by JMU in Liverpool. My paper explores the project as an example of the transformational potential inherent in applied theatre-based projects, enabling the recovery community to explore their experiences creatively and challenge the societal prejudices associated with addiction – thereby marking the transition from ‘being in recovery’ to becoming a ‘recoverist’.

Also in 2019, I represented the work of the project by participating in a 'recovery arts cafe' at Central School of Speech and Drama, curated by Dr Cathy Sloan. Her paper on the event The 'pop-up' recovery arts cafe: growing resilience through the staging of recovery was published in January 2021. You can view the paper here.


Read more about the 2019 Recovery and the Arts Conference



An updated version of Recoverist Theatre Project was created in 2022 and ran in the borough for ten weeks, one session a week, with an additional week for an end of project sharing at Southwark Playhouse. The project engaged thirty adults and had excellent feedback and outcomes for the participants. See here for the project Case Studies and an overview of the project.

The Recoverist Manifesto gives a voice to marginalised people that aims to dispel the stigmatising myths and legends associated with the condition by providing a counterblast that challenges current cliched misconceptions by reframing addiction as a health issue and recovery as a civil rights concern. Putting aside the culture of blame and shame by addressing the reader directly, the Manifesto suggests that addiction reflects the inequalities of contemporary life.

                       (Dibbits, K. 2015 Manchester University)