Read live by politicians, artists, celebrities, activists and members of the homeless community and using a combination of music, story-telling, film and performance this live theatrical event, directed by Hannah Price, ran in London for one day only ahead of a performance in Paris. The Productionĭrawing on the iconic works of Orwell and combining these with real-life, modern-day testimonies, Orwell’s Down and Out Live is an immersive production which focuses on the phenomenon of homelessness both in the past and present day. We are grateful to generous sponsorship from White Light, the Young Theatre and Stone Nest. It was supported using public funding by Arts Council England. The event was the result of a collaboration between The Orwell Foundation, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Libby Brodie Productions and UCL’s Festival of Culture.

Each performance was accompanied discussions and workshops on the contemporary challenges of homelessness and poverty. The performances – in London on 6th June, 2018 as part of UCL’s Festival of Culture, and Paris on 28th September, 2018 – are by the same team who produced the acclaimed reading of the whole of 1984 on a single day in 2017. In a multi-disciplinary production, modern stories from the streets are experienced alongside the Orwell text.

Readers include writers, activists, politicians, campaigners and young people who have been homeless.

The performance draws on other Orwell work including his diaries, The Spike and A Clergyman’s Daughter. Orwell wrote Down and Out in Paris and London as a result of his own experiences sleeping rough and working on what would now be called zero-hours contracts in hotel kitchens.

Watch the recording of Down and Out: LIVE in Paris.

Watch the recording of Down and Out: LIVE in London.

“The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually.” – George Orwell Home / Programmes / Orwell’s Down and Out: LIVE Orwell’s Down and Out: LIVE

George orwell down and out