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Ongoing Events
The Theatre Drop In meets every Tuesday 6 -7 at our Munster Road Studio, 61
Munster Rd Fulham. This is an informal group of people who are in early recovery
who have very little or no experience of drama. If your interested, just come along.
The Outside Edge Theatre Group meets every Tuesday 7.15 - 8.15 pm at our
Munster Road Studio in Fulham. This is a group of substance misusers in recovery
who have some experience of drama work who meet to develop projects for
performance. Ring us on 020 7371 8020 for details.
Munster Rd Fulham. This is an informal group of people who are in early recovery
who have very little or no experience of drama. If your interested, just come along.
The Outside Edge Theatre Group meets every Tuesday 7.15 - 8.15 pm at our
Munster Road Studio in Fulham. This is a group of substance misusers in recovery
who have some experience of drama work who meet to develop projects for
performance. Ring us on 020 7371 8020 for details.
Outside Edge Theatre Company whats on........
"Outside Edge has the inside edge
on addiction" Clinical Manager,
SHARP
on addiction" Clinical Manager,
SHARP
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| Addiction prevention through participation SocietyGuardian.co.uk Thursday May 3 A select audience crammed into the small common room of a drug treatment centre watches as the lead character in a play battles against her addiction to drink and drugs, tries to help her new boyfriend fight his own war against alcoholism and has to cope with the threats of her dealing ex-lover. Suddenly, a voice from the audience is contradicting the actor bringing some of his own life experience to the fictional dilemmas on stage. Eventually, he gets up on stage and takes over one of the main roles himself. This would be considered a disaster for most theatre companies. But for Outside Edge it is a normal day's work, using theatre to help recovering addicts and alcoholics confront their problems. The company is the brainchild of Philip Fox, an actor who 16 years ago found his life was being destroyed by his addiction to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. "I saw that theatre was something that kept me alive," he said. After overcoming his addictions and spending years working in community theatre, he started devising plans for a theatre group to help other recovering addicts and alcoholics come to terms with their problems. Outside Edge has now been touring rehabilitation centres and prisons since 1999. The actors are all recovering alcoholics or ex-drug addicts. Their specially-devised plays deal specifically with the problems recovering addicts and alcoholics face every day. The troupe performs a 40 minute play, then runs through it again. The second time around the audience is encouraged to stop the actors and provide their own input into what is happening on stage - even to the point of getting up and taking over the roles themselves. This usually lasts about 1hour. "It is stunning how well that can work," said Mr Fox. "Our audiences can be full of rage and they have to get up to have their say." Dave Mulvaney, are manager of RAPT(Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust) in London, which has used Outside Edge's work witrh its clients, said: "It is very useful, because it's a very creative medium to deliver relapse prevention therapy. It is alive and powerful and impacts on all the dynamics - family, work, the violence of growing up - all major issues in these people's lives." John Gordon Smith, head of the drug and alcohol team at Hammersmith and Fulham council, was an early champion of the company and is now on its board of trustees. He says: "It's great to have these plays that people can come along to and see aspects of their own lives. It's a play, but on the other hand it is also an active dialogue on what people have gone through. It actively takes them to a different level." Barry Maher was a recovering alcoholic and a drama school student when he went along to see an early production. "I was only six months out of treatment, so it was all still fresh for me," he said. "It was the first time I'd seen anything like my own experiences on stage like that." He went on to audition for the company and is now a regular member of Outside Edge. "The second part of the show is improvised and you don't know what you're going to come up against. The audience can be pretty vulnerable and pretty volatile." The plays, dealing with issues such as relationships, incest and crime associated with addiction, often hit a strong nerve in the lives of the audiences, many of whom are seeing live theatre for the first time in their lives. In a previous production, Family Life, Mr Maher played a social worker who takes a woman's child into care. "Some of the women who got up in the audience during that play had gone through that and they were laying into you as a character," he said. "You can get shocking responses from people to what they have seen." Adam Langer was one recovering drug addict who saw Family Life while he was going through treatment with a self-help group. "I was in floods of tears," he said. "You go and see a play that has no pretensions, no preaching, but just shows you what your home and your life was like. That is incredibly powerful." For Mr Langer, now clean for two years, the company has a valuable role to play in any rehabilitation programme. "In places like prisons and treatment centres, the hardest thing for people is to be vulnerable, to get in touch with what is inside you. But this work is so involving, it just breaks through that denial and it is an incredibly useful tool." "What is important is that people with addictions are not used to playing with different roles," said Mr Fox. "They're stuck in the role of the drug addict or the alcoholic. The plays get them to rehearse other roles, to see things from a different perspective." |
| Border Crossings is a powerful story that examines the dynamics of families affected by substance misuse experienced through the eyes of a 15 year old girl. |
| Border Crossings Outside Edge will be presenting Border Crossings at this years UK/European Symposium On Addictive Disorders organised by Addiction Today. For further information click here UKESAD Hope to see you there. |
| Our show based on the life of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, 'My Name's Bill', was a tremendous success. Many people were unable to see the show, since the production sold out or was inaccessible to them due to distance. In order to address this need Outside Edge will be taking the show on tour throughout the UK at the beginning of 2009 with extra dates planned for London. Details have yet to be finalised. The touring production of, 'My Name's Bill' will include extra previously unseen scenes that will not only focus on Bill and his wife Lois but will include an examination of the first meetings between Bill Wilson and Dr Robert Smith, meetings which officially started the world wide movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. |
Greg Donaldson as Bill Wilson in Outside
Edge's production of My Name's Bill
Edge's production of My Name's Bill
Production photos from My Name's
Bill
Bill
Cathy Walker as Lois Wilson