Case Study Evaluation Preperation: 'Cathy' Cardboard Citizens

1 . Who is the company and what is the particular project you would like to look at? (Please write a paragraph explaining who they are and what they are trying to do)

In my Case Study Evaluation I will be evaluating Cardboard Citizens aims and weather they had met those aims or not as a company in their recent performance called ‘Cathy’. Britain’s Cardboard Citizens is a company that makes theatre with and for homeless people. Their main aim is to “to change the lives of homeless people through the performing arts”. Also the company strives to spread awareness of homelessness and the misconceptions of this in society. To achieve their aim the companies objectives are:

• To tell stories through performances in public places such as the streets, hospitals, the stage and centres (Cardboard Citizens, 2016).
• Provide a main place for those that are homeless or excluded (Cardboard Citizens, 2016).
• Improve the confidence and skills of those people through workshops and support (Cardboard Citizens, 2016).
• Reach out to theatre lovers all around the world (Cardboard Citizens, 2016).
 

2. Why have you chosen to look at this particular project/ event?

I have chosen to look at the company’s performance ‘Cathy’ because personally I had been homeless at a point in my life when I was little, so I thought this would be an appropriate event for me to evaluate. I feel that I will be able to give a more fair and accurate evaluation on a subject matter I know, rather than one I do not know. I will be solely evaluating the event by using the aims and objectives of the company as a criterion, and then seeing whether the company met those aims and objectives or not. What I will be looking into is whether the performance I watched was truthful, diverse in its own right, widely accessible to all audiences, the audiences experience of the performance and how well the joker and the performers performed. I will also be evaluating how well the company applied Augusto's theory of 'Theatre of the Oppressed' and weather they linked it back to their aims and objectives or not.

3. What resources will you be using to evaluate this event? ( eg. going to see a workshop, video of a production, reviews... ) please be specific.

So far the resource I have looked at and will use to evaluate this event are: the performance I watched, Cardboard Citizens main website, a YouTube clip of the trailer of ‘Cathy’, an article about the company by Nick Smurthwaite and a review by Jessie Thompson. To be specific here is the list of resources below:

Bibliography

Ancock, G. (2009) Cardboard Citizen’s promotional video [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0I7CZ7GbJ4 [Accessed 3 December 2016]
Cardboard Citizens (2016) Audience reactions to Cardboard Citizens’ Cathy [online video] Available from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cx9Pu0JJ1A [Accessed 3 December 2016]
Cardboard Citizens (2016) Cardboard Citizens ‘Cathy’ Trailer [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IoSgUIgfJA [Accessed 2 November 2016]
Cardboard Citizens (2016) Speak with impact [Online] Available from: https://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/events/speak-impact [Accessed 28 October 2016]Cardboard Citizens (2016) The work of Cardboard Citizens [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8gKD-G_RE [Accessed 3 December 2016]
Cardboard Citizens (2016) Theatre of the oppressed [Online] Available from: https://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/theatre-oppressed [Accessed 28 October 2016]

Cardboard Citizens (2016) What we do [Online] Available from: https://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/what-we-do [Accessed 28 October 2016] CommunityChannelTV (2011) Untold stories- Cardboard Citizens [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-69yuzCxKz8 [Accessed 3 December 2016]Smurthwaite, N. (2015) ‘Cardboard Citizens: refusing to put the homeless in a box’, The Stage, 6978: 36-37.

Thompson, J. (2016) Cardboard Citizens on responding to Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home fifty years later: ‘homelessness can happen to anyone’ [Online] Available from:  http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/ken-loach-cathy-come-home-cardboard-citizens-a3366341.html [Accessed 15 November 2016]  

As I write my Case Study Evaluation I will keep on looking and referring to these resources. I will also look at more resources and pieces of evidence outside this list so my Bibliography will be longer and more varied once I wrote the whole of my Case Study Evaluation. As I write my Case Study Evaluation and comment critically, I hope that I will learn more about Cardboard Citizens and the work they do. This Case Study Evaluation will be my very first one, however I hope to learn a lot from it and I hope to improve my critical thinking skills.