Cardboard Citizens is delighted to announce that it will bring Jacqueline Wilson’s much-loved children’s story, The Bed and Breakfast Star, to theatres next spring.
Jacqueline Wilson’s trailblazing book, one of the first in children’s literature to explore homelessness from a child’s perspective, will be brought to life in a brand new stage adaptation for children aged 8 to 13 written by Emma Dennis-Edwards and directed by Cardboard Citizens’ Artistic Director, Chris Sonnex.
With more children living in temporary accommodation in England today than at any point on record, The Bed and Breakfast Star – Cardboard Citizens’ first theatre production for children in its 30 year history – brings this story to the stage at a moment when it has never felt more urgent.
World premiere performances of The Bed and Breakfast Star will be presented at Polka Theatre (25 March to 25 April 2027) and the Mercury Theatre (29 April to 2 May 2027) – with further tour dates to be announced. This landmark co-production between Cardboard Citizens and Polka Theatre, in association with the Mercury Theatre, is presented in partnership with Crisis, the national charity for people experiencing homelessness.
Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Bed and Breakfast Star: “I’m delighted that my book The Bed and Breakfast Star has been adapted into a riveting play and will have its debut at Polka Theatre. I have such happy memories of the Vicky Ireland productions there based on my books. I wrote The Bed and Breakfast Star in 1994 and it seems sad that its message is still ultra relevant nowadays. All power to Cardboard Citizens!”
When Jacqueline Wilson’s The Bed and Breakfast Star was first published in 1994, homelessness in temporary accommodation was already a national concern. Today, 177,530 children are living in temporary accommodation in England – more than at any point on record.
For more than three decades, Cardboard Citizens has used theatre and art to reshape perceptions of homelessness and poverty, confronting injustice through powerful storytelling and placing people with lived experience at the heart of its work. For its first theatre production for children, the award-winning arts and social justice charity turns its attention to the impact of homelessness on the youngest members of society, taking up the mantle of Jacqueline Wilson’s beloved book to build understanding and dismantle stigma around the hidden homelessness impacting hundreds of thousands of children today.
Chris Sonnex, director of The Bed and Breakfast Star and Artistic Director of Cardboard Citizens: “Jacqueline Wilson’s The Bed and Breakfast Star was first published more than thirty years ago, but what is truly heartbreaking is how much more urgent its story is today. When Emma Dennis-Edwards and I began talking about bringing this story to the stage, we weren’t looking back at a problem from the past, we were looking directly at the world around us. Elsa, the incredible character at the heart of Jacqueline Wilson’s story, is funny, defiant, imaginative and endlessly hopeful. She dreams, she jokes, she makes friends, she causes chaos. Through her eyes we experience the instability, insecurity and stigma of homelessness, but with humour as her superpower she refuses to let the circumstances around her define who she is.
Cardboard Citizens believes theatre can change how we see one another, and can change the narrative of homelessness and poverty. So many forms of homelessness, like temporary accommodation, are hidden, which makes it even more important for us to put these stories centre-stage. What Jacqueline Wilson imagined as one child’s story is the lived reality for hundreds of thousands of children today, and so working together with our incredible partners – Polka Theatre, the Mercury Theatre, Southbank Centre and Crisis – gives us the opportunity to tell this story on a scale that matches its importance.”
It’s the mid-90s and ten-year-old Elsa is dreaming of becoming a famous comedian. When her family is evicted from their home and forced to live in a run-down bed-and-breakfast, she must draw on all of her comic superpowers to brighten up the lives of her family and new friends. Staged with a heady dose of 90s nostalgia and a playlist to match, The Bed and Breakfast Star is adapted for the stage by award-winning playwright, Emma Dennis-Edwards (Not Your Superwoman, Funeral Flowers, and the Alfred Fagon Award-nominated, Bricks) and directed by award-winning director and Artistic Director of Cardboard Citizens, Chris Sonnex (More Than One Story, Bangers), who has lived experience of homelessness. Just like its protagonist Elsa, one of Jacqueline Wilson’s most memorable characters, the production will bring humour and heart to a story with a serious message that demands our urgent collective attention.
Playwright, Emma Dennis-Edwards, on adapting The Bed and Breakfast Star for the stage: “I am overjoyed to have adapted this incredible, funny and powerful story by the remarkable Jacqueline Wilson. As a millennial who read voraciously as a child, Jacqueline Wilson’s books were such a huge part of my childhood, and it has been a real privilege to step inside Elsa’s world and bring her story to the stage. What I love so much about The Bed and Breakfast Star is that although Elsa is a child experiencing homelessness, that is never the sum of who she is. She is funny, bold, imaginative and wildly ambitious. She dreams of becoming a star, and uses humour to make sense of a world that can often feel frightening and beyond her control. More than thirty years after the book was first published, it is heartbreaking that Elsa’s story feels as relevant and urgent as ever. But I also think there is something incredibly powerful in telling this story through the eyes of a child who refuses to be defined by her circumstances. Working with Chris Sonnex and Cardboard Citizens to bring Elsa’s world to life has been a dream, and I can’t wait for audiences to meet our Bed and Breakfast Star”.