Bold, moving and powerful, Behind the Lens brought a deeply human perspective to a subject too often reduced to statistics and arguments.
Falling Stars Theatre’s production, created in collaboration with Welcome House, follows the Smith family as encounters with people seeking sanctuary challenge their understanding of the world and their own circumstances. It’s an accessible way into a difficult subject, asking us to consider how much we really understand about the lives of people who have had to leave their homes.
For me, the involvement of people who use Welcome House gave the production its greatest impact. Having them share their own stories as part of the narrative was both heartbreaking and inspiring. There’s a considerable generosity in sharing experiences like these with an audience, particularly when they involve events that many of us would struggle even to imagine.
Those contributions gave real weight to the questions the play raises. What would it take for you to leave somewhere you call home? What would you miss? And how would it feel to try to rebuild your life somewhere unfamiliar, whilst other people debate whether you should be there?
Written and directed by Beccy Durham, Behind the Lens allows those questions to become personal. The Smith family provides a familiar point of entry, but it was the stories shared by Welcome House members that affected me most. Hearing about what people have endured, alongside their efforts to build new lives in Hull, made for an emotionally demanding and rewarding experience.
Behind the Lens took on a difficult subject with honesty and ambition. I’m grateful to Falling Stars Theatre for creating it, as well as to everyone who shared their experiences so openly. Together, they gave us a great deal to think about, and plenty that deserves to be heard more widely.
— Rich Sutherland, Editor, Hull Is This