A powerful premiere season,  unHOWsed sees these women take centre stage and shines a light on the unexplored territory of lives lived on the edge.

A multi-disciplinary performance work about older women’s homelessness, unHOWsed spotlights real voices – strong and significant.

Recent census data shows that in the last five years the number of older woman experiencing homelessness has increased by 31%. Homelessness Australia last year reported the number of older women “couch surfing” increased 83%, and the number of older women sleeping in cars rose 75% in four years.

“A group of friends wanted to write about their experience of life on the edge.”, explains writer Karen Corbett. “We were tired of the clichéd representations of older women – where were the women who led alternative lives? For a few of us housing had been an issue.

We had also recently heard of a warehouse with 25 older women living there in terrible conditions and realised the only thing that could bring these disparate characters together would be housing issues.“

“This “issue” of homelessness has been in the media a lot recently, but how does the audience receive information?”, adds Director Deborah Leiser-Moore. “Do they really hear it, or is it just another tragedy that doesn’t affect them? They can close the paper, leave the website, turn off the TV.