What we do
Unfinished Business combines a dark, naturalistic story of addiction, intertwined with dreamlike fantasy and live singing. The production was created for touring to treatment centres and rehabs, aimed at those in early recovery to recognise codependency and its potential to trigger relapse. By its nature, substance misuse and other compulsive disorders turn everyone affected by the illness into victims. Codependency itself can often lead to addiction. Unfinished Business looks at the struggle to break the cycle. It was devised by our professional workshop of actors, all of whom are in recovery and have progressed through our Theatre Skills Programme.
Our Theatre Skills Programme (TSP) offers a range of free, theatre-based workshops for all stages of recovery. We utilise our performances to create paths of engagement for our audiences to participate within our TSP workshops and aim to empower our participants to recognise triggers, and find support to work through difficulties within an empathetic support network with access to peer substance misuse education.
Our post-performance workshop breaks down specific issues and highlights recovery knowledge and tools. We can adapt the performance for various size venues and audiences. Evidence from our audiences demonstrates that sharing experiences and understanding of addiction through storytelling and performance resonates with the often fragile service users we encounter. We are currently working in conjunction with Dr Fay Dennis, who has received funding from the Wellcome Trust to carry out research on current care practices and reducing drug-related deaths