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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.
Outside Edge Theatre Company       whats on........
"Outside Edge has the inside edge
on addiction"
Clinical Manager,
SHARP
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  
Production photos from My Name's
Bill  
Cathy Walker as Lois Wilson