I SPENT time in a children’s convalescent home during my early childhood years. It was an experience that stayed with me into adulthood and the reasons for my going there were, for a long time, never fully understood. It remains unlikely that they ever will be clarified as there are so few archives to explore or records to access. While I became more curious about the experience, I never really engaged with the history.  

But when I attended a writers’ group run by Lisle Turner of Open Sky Theatre, I felt supported to explore further and write a drama about the subject and my experiences. It felt important for me to tell the story through the eyes of someone from a similar background of British Asian heritage. Lisle was captivated by the script and took it to show his co-director Claire Coache.

Together, Lisle, Claire and I agreed to make a physical theatre drama. Claire is devising the action; Lisle is both turning the script into a work of physical theatre and is my writing mentor as we continue to go forward in forming the play. Our shared political perspectives and joint engagement have added an extra dimension to our collaborative working process.

The drama is a one-person show and is being performed by an actor of British and Indian heritage, Genevieve Sabherwal. It is played out through a devised collaboration which used my text as a starting point. Mime, object manipulation, music and movement all add to enhancing the presentation.

The framing device for the story is a letter sent from the child, Uma, who is now an adult long estranged from her parents. The father has recently died, and this prompts her to re-initiate contact with her mother. Uma’s acknowledgement of her father’s death and the reflections of her childhood provide a basis for her to hope and ask for reconciliation with her mother. The letter is a vehicle through which complex familial relationships emerge both before and after her long stay in the convalescent home.    

I wanted to explore the socio-political context of the period when convalescent homes became widely used for children from the metropolis. We need to consider the institutional regime dominating the children’s lives within the home and which included racism facing those of a multi-ethnic heritage.

Further, we need to consider the lack of concern for the long-term negative consequences such children and their families were exposed to. These included the lack of education and schooling provided to children; both short-term and long-term effects of maternal deprivation; and the difficulties of returning to family life after leaving the convalescent home.

All these aspects are played out in the young life of Uma Taylor as she makes the journey to and from a convalescent home. The letter she writes as an adult to her estranged mother reflects her overcoming the adversity she faced as a child. Also, her new position in life and the forgiveness she can now find within herself are a testament to that progress.

The Home is based on working-class, lived experience and, as a piece of new writing is a staged as a pared-back, human-centric performance. This is what Jerzy Grotowski would call the “the theatre of the poor” — poor in resources but rich in communal experience.

It has been an egalitarian shared working experience with Open Sky, an anti-oppression arts organisation with a 15-year track record of making socially relevant, collaborative theatre and film work based on true stories.

It is appropriate that the work is being created in residence at Hereford College of Art so that young people can experience the collaborative process and political themes first hand. Institutional oppression, racism and class division are as relevant globally today as they were 70 years ago.

The Home will tour Shropshire, Herefordshire and Powys February 7-14. For tickets and information see: openskyahead.co.uk