Adrian Antony Jackson is the founder-director and chief executive of the theatre company Cardboard Citizens, who produce work by and for those who have experienced homelessness, including former homeless people, those at risk of homelessness, refugees or asylum-seekers. Jackson founded Cardboard Citizens in 1991, based around the principles of Augusto Boal and his Theatre of the Oppressed model. The company tours theatre productions, especially interactive Forum Theatre, to venues including hostels, day centres, schools and theatres. He was previously Associate Director of London Bubble, a long-established London touring community theatre company, with whom he directed a number of productions including Once Upon a Time, Far Far from England by Farhana Sheikh, Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare and Too Much Too Young by Catherine Johnson, as well as a number of Forum Theatre projects with communities including Irish Travellers, Deaf people, and adults with learning difficulties. Through Cardboard Citizens, he has collaborated with a number of other organisations, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, English National Opera, London Bubble, and Formaat Theatre in Rotterdam. Outside of Cardboard Citizens, Adrian Jackson is a well-travelled teacher and translator. He has worked as Augusto Boal’s translator on four books – most recently the Aesthetics of the Oppressed – and has collaborated with him on many occasions; apart from workshops, they also worked together on The Art of Legislation, an Artangel-sponsored piece of Legislative Theatre at County Hall in London. He has led training in the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology in many contexts - throughout Europe, as well as in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2014, Jackson won an Artangel Open Award, in collaboration with Andrea Luka Zimmerman. Their project was inspired by Vittorio de Sica's Bicycle Thieves, and encourages London's diverse communities to tell their own stories through performance and film, resulting in the 2019 feature filmHere For Life. He is currently working on his own book, provisionally entitled The Art of the Joker. In December 2017 he was awarded an MBE for Services to the Arts in the 2018 New Year Honours List.
Stage productions
; As director
Pimps, Pushers and Prostitutes + Bash Street Heroes
