WITH millions of people in the UK in desperate need of emergency food parcels, the need for food banks tripling in the last few years, and this demand outpacing the supply, one play explores this crisis in its own harrowing and comedic way.
Despite the name, Stuffed is not about food, rather it is about the lived experiences of those who use and volunteer at food banks. As co-director Grace Gallagher says, it’s about exploring the horror and heartbreak of the crisis through laughter.
Gallagher, who founded the award-winning theatre company Ugly Bucket, was inspired to create a show around food banks after her own “soul-shaking experience” volunteering at one during the coronavirus pandemic.
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As a result, she spent a year conducting research and visiting various food banks across the country to gather interviews and recorded testimonies from volunteers and the people who use them.
The real-life testimonies then became the framework of the show.
“Everything that you see in the show, you're constantly hearing these true stories, whether that's in the physicality or the music or the clowning, it all comes from a place of truth,” Gallagher (below) said.
“It pushes people into a place of really exploring their empathy and being put into a place where it's so immersive - it's trying to make you understand what this feeling is for people who are in these points of crisis.”
In the last five years, the number of people using food banks in the UK has risen by 94%, with a 21% increase in Scotland, which the charity attributes to the cost of living crisis due to people’s incomes having failed to keep up with the rise in inflation.
And the number of people receiving emergency food parcels from Trussell Trust food banks in the UK in the last 12 months was more than three million – with more than a million of them going to children.
The rising demand for emergency food aid has been so dramatic that The Trussell Trust has had to put temporary limits on the number of referrals a person can access as food banks struggle to meet the demand.
The Ugly Bucket uses clowning - a term used in theatre to act stupidly to make others laugh - to raise awareness, and Gallagher hopes that the comedic element in Stuffed will challenge people’s perspectives of this crisis.
Gallagher said: “Clowning is such an honest, vulnerable and truthful craft that lends itself really well to the truth.
“Even though what you're seeing visually might feel really abstract and silly, it does represent humanness and human nature.”
According to Gallagher, she was presented with the challenge of striking a balance between funny and serious - something which proved to be difficult when first writing Stuffed.
“I remember even when we were doing this interview process, turning to Rachel Smart, who I run the company with, and just being like I can't find any funny in this. Like, where's the funny in any of this,” she explained.
“Because everything that I'm hearing is so unfair and unjust and devastating.
“It was a really tricky balance, but actually, the struggle in trying to find a comedy kind of became part of the comedy within the show itself.”
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Gallagher believes that by making people laugh, they are better at listening.
She said that comedy is an underrated yet powerful tool for education and that laughter creates a feeling of safety so you can approach tough conversations more easily.
“It's really hard to talk about these things outside of the theatre,” Gallagher said.
She added: “When you can get an audience of people to laugh, even if we're laughing within a subject that feels so dark and hopeless, we can find laughter within that.
“It's almost like that spark of hope and that feeling of safety in the room unites people, and so we can unite audiences through laughter.
“Then grab the tools and the resources that they need to then take it on beyond the theatre.”
Audience members are encouraged to bring donations for food banks along to the show. The donated items are used as props in the production and are then given to the Edinburgh Food Project afterwards.
Gallagher said it is important for people to realise the impact that they have and that by donating and listening to the discourse from the show, they have already played a huge part.
She said: “Even though you're taken to this moment of complete bleakness, the hope is kind of that realisation that part of the answer has been there the whole time, and it's already been partly done.
“You've already done a small part of it and seeing the kind of simplicity in that, you hope it encourages people that it doesn't have to be one giant answer today or tomorrow.”
Gallagher recognises that the crisis isn’t just about food and that there is a deeper social issue at the root of the problem.
The show delves into these problems and aims to highlight the multifaceted issues food poverty stems from while hoping to bridge an understanding with their audience.
Stuffed will run from July 31 to August 26 at 14:25 every day, except for August 18, at the Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh.
Tickets are available HERE.
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