'An angry piece of work' Holograms tell stories of victims of austerity

It is impossible to look away from the shimmering figures that emerge in what initially appears to be an empty room. And that is the point.

- Robyn Vinter

Through a headset donned at the entrance to Museum of Austerity, which opened at the HOME theatre in Manchester on Wednesday, holograms of people glow in eerie augmented reality.

They feel real and touchable but also ghostly and ephemeral - they were real people who died when society's safety net did not catch them.

"It's a really angry piece of work," the director Sacha Wares said of the co-production from English Touring Theatre, National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio and Trial & Error Studio.

Though the 3D holograms are played by actors, each of their stories is narrated by a real family member of the person who died following run-ins with the Department for Work and Pensions' harsh and punitive disability benefits system. It is juxtaposed with audio from the House of Commons, in which politicians orate on how the system is too generous and rife with fraud.