Production in caravan aims to hit a home run

Theatre show explores class and social mobility using unusual set

A pop-up theatre show performed in a caravan has pitched up in Dundee.

Mobile is a production exploring the issues of class, home, belonging, social mobility and the emotional effects of “moving up” in the world.

Performed in front of a tiny audience in an intimate setting, the 40-minute show features interactive elements, video projections and original music, as well as recorded interviews with people across the UK.

The show is based on research on social mobility by Dr Sam Friedman, a London School of Economics sociologist. Dr Friedman conducted the study by questioning 52 people who had experienced significant upward social mobility.

“The results were striking,” he said. “While these people were clearly proud of their achievements – they were the first in their family to go to university and now enjoyed economic security – success had come at a considerable emotional price.

“Most had experienced mobility as a distinctly bumpy ride – a lonely, uneasy journey that left them at once dislocated from their working-class roots and at the same time not entirely comfortable in their new, middle-class, cultural habitat.

“It struck me that these stories, which seemed to paint a different picture of mobility to the one presented by politicians, needed to be shared beyond academia.”

Dr Friedman approached Paper Birds – a theatre company with a political approach – and Mobile was born. The show is on the road, being performed at schools, high streets and festival theatres around the UK, including outside the Rep Theatre in Dundee.

Actress Georgie Coles, 24, one of the main performers in the production, said: “All of the characters in the show are real people and we get to hear the testimony of what has happened to them in their lives.

“By setting the research within a creative context, we were able to bring emotion to it.”

Today is the last day Mobile will be in Dundee, and it is to be performed at intervals between noon and 8.15pm.

All of the characters in the show are real people... GEORGIE COLES

Picture: Gareth Jennings. Actress Georgie Coles on the set of Mobile.