This trilogy of work is really about austerity.
What we're living through at the moment
is a real divergence
between the haves and the have-nots...
..and the crippling effect
that poverty can have -
how that affects people's lives
in very real ways, pragmatically,
but also, and more importantly, what it does to them psychologically.
With all the plays, what you're looking for
is a situation that tells more than the sum of its parts.
So a group of isolated people
meeting on...
an insecure shift in the middle of the night
in a meat factory on the outskirts of town on a zero-hour contract today in Britain
talks about so much more than just cleaning or zero-hour contracts.
It actually becomes a story about insecurity.
It first was written in 2013,
then it was revised in 2014 for the full version,
then it came to the National Theatre in 2015.
That was really the beginning of the...
When austerity began to really hit people.
I think it's the defining feature of our generation -
the last ten years has been these policies that have...
that have affected so many people in such a deliberate way.
Beyond Caring
which we made kind of quite specifically
to start with for The Yard Theatre.
You had these really industrial, like, places around you.
So there was a veg shop, there was a carpenter's, there was an ironworks.
And then there was a theatre.
So I really wanted to embrace the fact that this play was about workers
and about cleaners in particular.
After ten minutes of
I thought it was terrible.
I didn't know if I was watching probably the best actors I'd ever seen
or the worst!
It was extraordinary,
because nothing appeared to happen, and it really shook me.
And after about ten or 15 minutes,
I realised it was absolutely brilliant and spellbinding
and by the end of it,
I wanted to stand up and punch one of the characters in the head
and help another one up off the floor!
And I felt very much that...
that I wanted to be involved in the action as an audience member, not as an actor.
That I wanted... I felt physically
like I wanted to get up and help people.
NATASHA: The lights remain on the whole time. You're sharing a floor
with the actors. The actors are mopping the floor
and you have to pick your feet up.
Like, it really was about making the audience
feel like they were involved.
We took all of that
and then transferred it to the National, which was such a great opportunity
and such a wonderful challenge, because actually,
we were then presenting it to people who weren't kind of hipster theatregoers
in a suburb of East London - they were the people who were making the laws
and they were people who, in some ways, had no concept
that these policies and these wages
were actually real and affecting people in such a profound way.
After I saw the play, I was enraged. I went for a walk up the South Bank
and was so angry and felt such a sense of injustice
for what I'd witnessed, that I'd believed and was entirely sincere,
and wonderful acting...
And so I had to find out who directed it,
and he was up in the bar upstairs!
So I sought him out and said, 'I don't know what you're doing next,
'but I am definitely going to be in it.'
And luckily, he agreed!
So, after
and talked about our public life, although in a very intimate way,
I wanted to talk about our intimate life in a very public way.
I came up with this place that was this hostel, and it felt like
a theatrical space where something could happen today.
Very early, I had this couple of this mother and this son
that I knew would involve him cleaning her in an act of love.
And then I found this report
on Christmas and families in B&Bs from Shelter.
The first time that I met Alex, he came round to my house
with Bill Rashleigh from Shelter.
You know, he just let me speak
and he went into depth into the things that I went into
and just really wanted to know what my story was
and how I was living, and how I lived through that time.
After I had gone through being in the bed and breakfast
and the charity Shelter helping me,
it was very, very important to me that I gave back,
that I campaigned on behalf of other people that were homeless.
So when Alex came along and said, 'Look, I want to do this play
'about people that are in the bed and breakfasts
'and the whole temporary accommodation situation and homelessness
'that is going on within our country -
'would you be a part of it?' I jumped at it.
NATASHA: The set for
There was a strong sense that the floor was important.
There was a back wall, but within the back wall, there were two bedrooms,
and those bedrooms, we essentially wanted to feel like were classical paintings.
So the door could open, there could be some beautiful side light,
and you could see kind of a gem of an image
of someone within that room.
We continued from
a sense that the audience and the actors are as one.
So we had the thing we called the back wing,
which was essentially a forest of seats,
where they could have an actor sitting next to them
receiving a phone call.
So you were aware as an audience that you were constantly
both watching what was happening, but you were also being observed by other people.
LOUISE: Janet was sort of built off of me.
So I saw a lot of...
her within me - her pain, her struggle, her guilt.
I saw Luke, who was a father,
struggling to see his kids having to go through what they were going through,
and that was me.
NEW SPEAKER: It was a member of the Refugee Council in Stratford,
which gives support to refugees
to integrate in society, and give different sort of activity to them.
I've got the email from them...
..asking for...
The audition was Alex, for
I remember I came to the National Theatre
and I did the audition.
There was many actresses there, and actors.
And they selected me to do
I was very proud at that moment.
ALEX: We were doing an exercise called The Tightrope.
You imagine that you're walking
on a tightrope. I said, 'You're walking on a tightrope,
'where you're meeting somebody you've lost for a long time
'and you're meeting them for the first time.'
And she did this with such conviction in every fibre of her being and her body
that I felt, this is a born actress,
who's got something so special and so truthful.
And, fundamentally, she has a need for theatre.
NICK: I remember on the first night, there was a guy standing outside
and as I walked out the Dorfman, he said,
'I was a carer myself up until a week ago.
'I cared for my mother, and she died last week.
'And this hasn't fixed me,
'but it will help me process.'
It was really traumatic.
We spent 18 months, two years,
living, working, workshopping with people who were suffering from this.
We felt a responsibility to represent those people
as accurately and as truthfully and as painfully as possible,
because what we discovered was quite horrific.
LOUISE: Watching
I came out of there in tears.
And I kind of also felt that the way he had done so much justice to that story,
I came out feeling kind of guilty that I wasn't living that horrible life any more.
Something that I've never experienced before.
Alex has done years of research,
and I think that makes a difference to how you commit
and feel about the character.
So I've met, you know, many people like Hazel,
who's the lead volunteer of a community centre and cook.
And she provides a hot meal three times a week
to people that are in extreme poverty.
Hazel herself has problems as well.
But you don't see those. She puts those last,
and puts other people first, really.
One thing I think that this period we're living through at the moment
will really show is...
the inequality of opportunity, and particularly the breakdown of community.
We're constantly up against the dichotomy of
exploring stories that are sometimes quite extreme
and almost always involve people who would never go to the theatre.
And yet we're telling them in a theatre for people who do go to the theatre,
so there's a juxtaposition there which...
..can sometimes be...celebrated,
but it can also be hypocritical.
And I think Alex works very hard, in a very pure way, to try and balance that.
NICK:
was about zero-hours contract workers.
The next play,
temporary housing and people that were in the situation
of temporary housing and homelessness.
And this play is about the care system and the effects of the care system
historically on people,
and how it affects the rest of their lives.
Some of the people that are in the care system
have spoken of how, at the age of 16,
they had no one in their life that they had known for more than a year.
This allows us to open up a mirror
to our own lives
and our own need for others, and what binds us to others.
Although this play is absolutely like
a traditionally written play in many respects,
there's always this process of exploration and improvisation
and writing on people,
through people, and therefore, to a degree, with them.
The most important thing is rhythm.
The rhythm of life, the rhythm of what's going on.
Each person has a miraculously individual rhythm,
and that's what I'm seeking to compose with, I guess.
NICK: You will feel like it's completely loose and improvised,
and in fact, it would feel like you're watching a rehearsal
or a series of improvisations.
But it's not. That rhythm's been worked on slavishly for weeks.
The rehearsal process is about trying to find that true...
nuance and rhythm,
and then smashing out the learning of it.
Usually at the last minute!
NEW SPEAKER: My character, Beth,
has two kids, one of whom has just been taken into care.
The play isn't just about text -
it's about small acts of human kindness.
What I love about his theatre is that the audience is as vulnerable
as the play.
HIND: It is a very intense moment for...a mother
coming asking for a free meal because they can't provide their meal or...
They should feel not ashamed or...
They should feel proud
for the people they're coming to.
And...
I feel, yeah, it's a very intense moment there.
NATASHA: This piece feels like it very much fits
within the arc of the...
of the trilogy, I guess.
But that it is a standalone play
which really sort of asks you as an audience
to engage with a slightly bigger idea,
which is the interconnectedness of everybody.
ALEX: Natasha has so beautifully worked again
on creating this community centre that is about to close,
in which people meet to start a choir,
but a woman comes seeking solace for her child that's been taken into care
from the woman who runs the community centre.
So
about care in every meaning of that word.
It's a story of...
..someone's search for what to do in the face of a personal apocalypse.
I don't really look back very much.
You know, I just try and move forward in a way that feels truthful.
And that's very difficult sometimes for all of us,
the struggle to be sincere in our lives and our work.
And I want my shows to make people feel complex feelings.
I want them to feel overwhelmed and I want them to feel disturbed.
Because, you know, it's hard to confront this reality.
But it's not as hard as it is for those that live it,
by any means.