A Life with PIP

A Life With PIP, is a bold, short-form solo piece, written and performed by award-winning poet and disability-rights advocate Stephen Lightbown.  

Stephen Lightbown is a Bristol based wheelchair-user, poet and storyteller whose work interrogates the lived experience of applying for benefit and navigating the UK welfare system. In A Life With PIP, he turns his own story of applying for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) into theatre—sharp, honest, evocative and full of humour, frustration and humanity. 

Blending spoken word, storytelling and raw performance, A Life With Pip is particularly relevant today given recent proposed changes to the UK’s disability benefits system. The show takes the audience through the absurdity of a process stripped of humanity, a process that is designed to assess need but too often leaves the applicant feeling humiliated.  

Based on lived experience, this is a show that speaks to anyone who’s ever had to justify their existence to a system that’s supposed to help, and is necessary viewing for anyone who wants to understand the system more.  

The show was originally commissioned by Theatre Absolute and first performed at the Shop Front Theatre, Coventry on August 12 2021.  

“This is my story, yes—but it’s also our story: every time someone is made to feel less than simply because they live with a disability, that’s the system telling them they don’t belong. I wanted to push back. I wanted to say: I am here, I will tell you how it really is.” — Stephen Lightbown