Bypassing the Law in a Homeless Vehicle

Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van

Polish artist and social activist Krzysztof Wodiczko received much attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s for his “Homeless Vehicle Project.” [1] The Homeless Vehicles were carefully engineered and constantly improved devices designed to make life for urban street dwellers easier and to afford them a form of protected visibility in the streets of the modern metropolis. Protection and visibility are also two major functions fulfilled by the ‘homeless vehicle’ in Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van, published as a book in 1989, adapted to the stage in 1999 by the author, and brought to the screen by Nicholas Hytner in 2015. [2] […]