after homelessness...is, by design, participatory - involving people who are living homelessness and mental health, issues that the organisers explain are often attached. This strategy is based on the observation that, while the finances to build affordable housing will come from governments and developers, the knowledge of what will make that housing "safe and appropriate" can only come from those people who have life knowledge of the issues.

Headlines Theatre characterises forum theatre as an opportunity for creative, community-based dialogue. In October 2009, Headlines Theatre gathered a group of 20 participants who were paid to participate in a 6-day "theatre for living" workshop. The workshop strategy evolved from Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed"; Headlines Theatre has integrated a systems-based perspective whereby a community is a complexly integrated, living organism. As part of this process, workshop participants engage in very specific games and exercises that help them investigate issues at a deep level.

After a 3-week period, selected participants join with Headlines Theatre to create a play. When presented to the public, this play is performed once, all the way through, so that the audience can see the situation and the problems presented. The story builds to a crisis and stops there, offering no solutions. The play is then run again, with audience members able to "freeze" the action at any point where they see a character engaged in a struggle. An audience member yells "stop!", comes into the playing area, replaces the character s/he sees struggling with the problem, and tries out his/her idea. This is called an "intervention". The process is meant to be "fun, profound, entertaining and full of surprises and learning."

The 15 "legislative performances" held in Metro Vancouver in November and December 2009 - with some tickets free to groups working on homelessness - will be followed by community dialogue sessions called "housing the homeless", a series of moderated panel discussions that will get at the nuts and bolts of creating safe, affordable, and supportive housing. The sessions will tackle location, financing, and necessary supports and services, each day respectively. This will not be a series of lectures; rather, panels will be made up of people who have been homeless, Metro Vancouver City councillors, housing advocates, and business leaders, among others. The panelists will share their experience and knowledge with the topics rather than provide set answers. The solutions will be sought within the conversation.

Organisers had earlier extended a call for photographs communicating homelessness. Headlines Theatre received 265 photos, mostly from all over Canada's Lower Mainland. A few came from the rest of Canada, and some from as far away as India, Thailand, and Mexico. Winning photographs are viewable online, and will be part of a group art exhibition at Gallery Gachet for the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival in November 2009.

A Community Action Report, generated from this interactive process, will suggest policies that will be received and considered by the government and various agencies. Headlines Theatre has written agreements from 6 organisations, including the City of Vancouver, BC Housing and the Mental Health Commission of Canada, to receive the report, which will be made available on the Headlines Theatre website for their research.

Homelessness, Rights.

Organisers anticipate that the play, as performed, will approach homelessness as a community health issue - exploring how homelessness intertwines with mental health, and how the complexity of these issues require well-thought-out housing solutions. The report "Housing and Support for Adults with Severe Addictions and/or Mental Illness in British Columbia", commissioned by the BC Health Ministry, estimates that 8,000 to 15,500 adults in the province with severe addictions or mental illness are homeless, and almost 40,000 are inadequately housed. In part, Headlines Theatre points out, this can be linked to the fact that, in the 1980s, various governments started deinstitutionalising the mentally ill. The federal cost sharing for a national housing programme ended in 1993, with only 3 provinces continuing to maintain their provincial housing programmes. "In BC, welfare rates were chopped in 2002 which had a direct impact on the level of street homelessness."