Home, The Shed, National Theatre

What does it mean to call somewhere ‘home’? It’s a contentious topic in 2014, especially for young people. Rents are spiralling, house prices soar like rockets before exploding somewhere that many cannot reach, and our economy does not bring them back down to earth. With levels of youth homelessness in the UK at an all-time high - up to 80, 000 young people are said to be affected by it - where do its victims go when society turns its back ?

Nadia Fall’s timely social commentary Home returns to The Shed after a sell-out run last August, bringing to life the voices of the unheard and overlooked - the young residents and staff who live and work behind the concrete walls of an inner city high-rise hostel, Target East. Using real testimonials, Fall has created an astonishing production with true grit and gravitas, with the political aspiration that policymakers themselves “should come and have a look”. 

There's an element of social responsibility about seeing this play. It shatters any assumptions you may hold about the kind of young person who might end up on the streets. These characters are not thugs, or uneducated, or hopeless - they are the unlucky victims of ill provision and happenstance. 

In order to create Home, Fall recorded 48 hours’ worth of interviews with the residents of a giant London hostel. She found that all had suffered in serious, acute ways. Absent parents, abuse, family breakdown: all scarring experiences which, she saw, pushed many into dangerous lives and pursuits - drugs, gangs, violence. In the play she homes in on their humanity as people who are badly hurting and yet whom the average commuter might cross the street to avoid. 

Her aim, she has said, is that the interview material be be used in other ways to create “real tangible policy change," engendering "a life beyond the art”. We hope so, too.