The Home: Durational Stay
Are you tough enough…
…to get old?
Multi award-winning artist Christopher Green dares you to find out with his new ground-breaking production, The Home: Durational Stay.
You’re invited to check yourself in as a resident of a temporary theatrical care home, where you’ll live – full-time – for a weekend in September.
Each resident will have their own bespoke experience. You’ll be given your own bedroom (thank god); your own key-workers; your own treatments for your own ailments; as well as your own entertainment and wellbeing schedule.
However, with that, as with everyone in care, you’ll also be handing over major parts of you life to be managed by someone else. Beyond the privacy of your room, you’ll live communally, you’ll eat communally, and you’ll be entertained communally. At points you might need to be fed, whilst at other points you might experience what it’s like be to excluded from ‘the decisions about your life that really matter’.
The aim of the show is to raise awareness of what life is like in residential care, whilst also sparking discussions about how ‘we can reimagine and reinvent care homes as places of possibility’. It’s the centrepiece of this year’s Age Against The Machine, a new cultural festival that hopes to open up the subject about what it means to grow old in today’s society.
Green developed the show with the help of plenty of discssions with older people, about their experiences and opinions, and with the support of a number of experts in the field.
For those people who aren’t so keen to join for the whole experience, but would still like a taste, they’re also offering a number of 90 minute drop-in events throughout the weekend. For example, Saturday night is Bingo Night, where visitors are invited to play bingo, win prizes, and enjoy a couple of drinks with the other residents. You can also attend the home’s talent show, where visitors and residents alike will compete to win a number of fabulous prizes.
Come on baby, let’s do The Twist.
NOTE: The Home: Durational Stay will take place from Friday the 13th of September to Sunday the 15th of September. Tickets for the full weekend are £100 and are allocated via a lottery system. Please note there are only 30 tickets available. To apply, or for more information visit their website here. The deadline for applications if Friday the 16th of August. You can also book in for each of the 90 minute sessions via the same website.
Surrey House, Goldsmiths College, 80 Lewisham Way, New Cross, London, SE14 6PB