Recoverist Theatre Project
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.

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.

Read A Recoverist Manifesto (PDF).
Watch A Recoverist Manifesto (Part 1) on YouTube.
Participant Images & Feedback

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)

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)


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 Theatre, who 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.

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.