Play about poverty in Waterloo region shares 'stigma-breaking stories' to connect with audiences

A new theatre project hopes to shine a light on the realities of living below the poverty line in Waterloo region.

The play is called Living Below The Line and 14 individuals — who themselves live in poverty — have co-created it and and will present it with Ontario's Watercourse Theatre.

Jeffrey Beckner plays a number of characters, including a doctor, the host of a quiz show and he's in a scene about an adult who struggles with being a high school dropout.

"I've been involved with social justice projects or social justice issues for a long time and this is a different way of dealing with it," Beckner said. 

"There's advantage and disadvantage in our community and they're in parallel realities, taking up the same space, but they seldom intersect and everything's driven by the advantage, and the disadvantage need to end up dealing with it," he added.

"There's a lot of reasons why people became poor and issues relating to that so I'm here as a different way of doing that, getting it to a different audience."

Cate Frid, producer of the play, says she likes to do co-creation work with different communities.

"It's wonderful to have the opportunity to give voice and help stage something that other people would like said, other people's stories. And that's what this is," she said.

She said the group worked together to build trust for about a month before they started the process of creating the play.

Privacy was important, Frid said, so anyone who didn't want to share their personal story didn't need to, but some people did.

"Many people felt — or told me they felt — that after they share their stories, they kind of felt like they had a weight lifted off their shoulder and they felt that when they shared it with the group, other people understood where they were coming from," Frid said.

"Certainly these are very stigma-breaking stories, so people feel they're very important to be heard by the community as a whole."

One of the people to share her personal story in the play is Louise Murray.

"It's a little difficult because it's a crazy story," she said.