Headlines Theatre’s after homelessness... draws on the experiences of Vancouverites who know what it’s like to be left out in the cold

Sandra Czechaczek never imagined she would be homeless. The 43-year-old grew up in Point Grey, and for many years lived a stable, even affluent life. “I had a BMW; I used to drive down on Hastings Street and go, ”˜Wow, poor people,’ ” Czechaczek recalls on a break from a theatre rehearsal at the Russian Hall. “And now I am that person on the outside.”

About five years ago, Czechaczek’s addiction to drugs and alcohol took a serious toll. “I had everything and I lost everything in my life, including the roof over my head, which I never thought would happen,” she recalls. “But I mean, you know, you’re just one paycheque away from being there.”

Czechaczek is one of 20 workshop participants whose experiences form the basis for Headlines Theatre’s new play, after homelessness”¦, which opens at the Firehall Arts Centre on Saturday (November 21). It’s an issue most people in Vancouver are well aware of—so much so that Headlines’ artistic director David Diamond wondered how his theatre company might be able to contribute something meaningful to the discussion.

“I was concerned that if we tried to do anything, it was going to be really redundant,” recalls Diamond, interviewed with Czechaczek. “Because, does the city need an alarm-bell–ringing play about homelessness? No. And then I got invited to a meeting that [mental-health advocate] Senator [Michael] Kirby was speaking at, and he started talking about how, in his words, we were turning the streets and the prisons into the asylums of the 21st century.”

Recognizing how closely homelessness is interwoven with mental-health issues, Diamond found a new focus for the project: “How do we create housing that’s safe and appropriate in the context of people having been homeless, housing that doesn’t drive people back out into the street?”

Czechaczek found that some of the housing solutions she was offered did just that. “I ended up in this really awful hotel room full of roaches and rats,” Czechaczek recalls. “And so then you make a choice. Well, you know, I had my room, but I never stayed there. I would still stay on the street because it was better out there.”

In one of the hotel rooms she lived in, she was bitten by a rat. “There were more health issues in the hotel than there were outside, as far as I was concerned,” she says. Czechaczek recalls that social-service agencies were not sympathetic. “Well, I was the problem, because, you know, ”˜Well, we gave you a place to stay and you keep leaving or getting evicted or you’re not happy and you end up on the street—well, you know, that’s your fault. You should stay in your bug-infested room that we gave you.’ ”

Diamond says that two distinct living spaces are emerging in the world of the play. “We have this SRO [single room occupancy hotel] that is just like Sandra’s been talking about—it’s bug-infested and it’s a really dangerous space.” He points to the other side of the rehearsal room. “And we have this tarp over here, where [we have] another character, Otis, who’s tried to be inside, who’s tried to live in this kind of space, and he can’t. It’s too unhealthy. But he’s put a tarp up on Expo Boulevard. And in fact, inside his life, it’s really healthy space. And it’s really challenging because we don’t want to see people living in tarps. Especially right now. Because the world can’t come here and see Otis living in a tarp on Expo Boulevard. But you know what? He’s not hurting anybody. And he’s found something that works for him.”

Offering solutions isn’t the jurisdiction of the play’s creators. Using the techniques of forum theatre, after homelessness”¦ will invite audience members to intervene in the play, creating new scenarios that can reshape the characters’ lives. It’s empowering, eye-opening, and often a lot more fun than the seriousness of the subject matter might suggest.

And Diamond has ensured that the suggestions that emerge from each performance won’t be lost when the house lights come up. Following the run, Headlines will produce a community action report that will reframe ideas gleaned from the interactive performances into policy recommendations, which will be presented to a number of housing and mental-health agencies.

So who’s the target audience for the show? “The people who think that they have all the answers,” offers Czechaczek. “They don’t. I mean, they’re asking somebody that has a house in the British Properties what to do about homelessness. You don’t ask them, you ask somebody who’s either been or is [homeless]. They’re the ones living that life, not the person that’s allocating the money and making all the choices.”

Diamond is looking forward to drawing a diverse crowd. “I think when this works the best is when the people who really know homelessness—and you know we’re networking free tickets through all kinds of agencies—are sitting crammed in the theatre next to the kind of people that Sandra’s talking about, and they’re in the experience together.”

When asked what she hopes audiences will take from the show, Czechaczek says: “We have to learn that everybody’s a different person. I mean, you’ve got somebody with mental issues, you’ve got somebody with addictions, you’ve got somebody who’s just messed up just from being down there, and we’re not just all one clump of people, and we can’t just be, like, brushed into rooms. That’s not the solution.”

Diamond agrees that one enormous challenge in addressing homelessness is “this sense of us and them. Like, who are they? And that if we really get it, that the older guy going through the Dumpster is somebody’s brother, parent, son, and that he’s us, it becomes much harder to go, ”˜No, no, no, not me,’ and ”˜I’ll never be there,’ and ”˜If he’d only done what I did, he wouldn’t be doing that right now.’ Well, chances are he did a lot of the things that you did, and life intervened, and nobody grows up going, ”˜I hope I’m gonna go through a Dumpster later in my life.’ ”

Czechaczek concurs that it’s important to put a face to homelessness, “so people don’t just look at us as garbage. Like, we didn’t wake up one morning and say, ”˜Well, I want to be a drug addict on Main and Hastings,’ you know what I mean?”