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work.txt (Modern Plays)

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Graeber’s most perceptive question is ‘what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?’ Capitalism has made us value the wrong kinds of work. Work for financial gain has become the most visible and most societally valued kind of work. But we work in exchange for so many things, and we get so many things in exchange for much other than work. I wonder, sometimes, what would happen, if we framed the value of work in the terms of Ann Boyer’s question ‘but who made this world?’. If we collectively decided that we were exchanging our work for how much world we made by doing it? An adaptation of Ellis’s recent show work.txt, it mixes existential soul-searching with wry comedy, tempered by the quiet cry of a world yearning to reinvent itself. No, in short. It’s criminally underfunded and it’s pushing the wrong people out. The people working in theatre are incredible – the talent and passion is extraordinary – but the sums don’t add up, and we’re going to end up in a place where it’s just famous people doing revivals of plays by already successful playwrights, and then the politicians will turn around and say that theatre isn’t reflecting British culture. It’s depressing. Emily Davis is a producer of theatre and live events. She is producer at Farnham Maltings and associate producer with Poltergeist Theatre who were named in the Guardian's 'best young theatre companies'. Recent credits include Ghost Walk by Poltergeist Theatre starring Juliet Stevenson and Paterson Joseph, work.txt and work.txt online, and i will still be whole (when you rip me in half) by Ava Wong Davies (**** The Stage).

But this is the wrong question. Or at least, it’s a question that is easily answered: ‘because I do not know which work I should be doing.’ This leads to a better question: ‘what is the nature of the work that I am doing?’. Asking this helps us begin to answer the current beneath all these work-questions, ‘what is the work that I want to do?’. Are there any writers who influence or inspire you at all? Have any particular plays stood out for you in recent years? You’re currently developing some projects for TV and you are part of the BBC Drama Room. How differently do you approach a screenplay to a stage play?There are so many budding writers but it’s an incredibly competitive field and one that’s notoriously hard to break into. What advice would you give to someone hoping to write a script and get it out there? Work.txt is a show about work in which the audience do all (well… most of) the work. Only they tread the boards as there are no actors; following instructions projected on the wall, communicated over headphones or printed out onto a script. They build the set, read lines and act out what needs acting out together (if they are okay with that), alone (if they volunteer) or just as witnesses (if they prefer) to the others, the interplay between audience and screen, and to the light show and music, aided by an atmospheric haze machine. The past six months have taught me that nostalgia is a wonderfully adaptable emotion, ready to paint any old shit from the past in charming pastel hues – even the perma-grind of gainful employment. The hungover scrabble for work-appropriate clothes? Wow, how nice to have something to dress up for. That piss-smelling tunnel at London Bridge Station? Ahh, an Alice-in-Wonderland-worthy rabbit hole of delights. The commuter crush? Truly, an invigorating moment of risk-free togetherness. The first time I saw work.txt I wasn’t particularly in love with ‘having a job’ as an abstract concept, but as mass layoffs hit pretty much every sector, that ambivalence feels like a luxury. He can’t live without almond milk and has said he’d be happy to receive it for his birthday any time.

Writing for theatre isn’t actually so solitary. I spend a lot of time on my own, but the actual writing time is quite limited – you could get up tomorrow and retype every word I’ve ever written and you would be done by teatime. It’s a complete joy working out solutions to problems on your own and imagining how what you’re doing might end up onstage, but you always have in your mind that eventually it will be in a room with other people – that’s why being a playwright is the best job in the world in my opinion. When did writing itself come into your life? And when did you realise it was something you wanted to do for a living? This is what the late David Graeber outlines in an article for STRIKE!, writing that where technology was supposed to lessen our need to work, instead it ‘has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more.’ [4] The ancillary jobs that seem to spring up essentially to facilitate the act of more people doing more work are down to the fact that, as Graeber puts it, ‘The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger.’Berardi, Franco, “What Does Congnitariat Mean? Work, Desire and Depression.”, Cultural Studies Review, vol 11, issue 2, (2005), pg. 1. The play concludes with a sort of semi-serious ramble about various existentially surreal future predictions which don’t seem to be saying anything in particular, “In 50,000 years, light will dress for the job it wants”, furthering the impression that the script is by the by. The form, however, is fairly effective in as much as instead of paying a professional cast, the audience is made to work, not only not being compensated for their work, but actually paying for the honour, which many will find a familiar ploy in the gig economy. In a similar vein, don’t expect any conventional performers in Nathan Ellis’s very clever Work.txt( pictured above, picture by Guy Sanders) at Summerhall, but do expect to be doing quite a bit of a show’s work yourself. That might involve a bit of group reading, some solo microphone work, a few gentle construction activities, even a bit of lying on the floor. Nathan Ellis said, "I wrote the show as a sort of satire of the always-on, never-stopping work culture, and then the whole world stopped because of COVID. As the pandemic recedes, it's fascinating and depressing to see how the energy of just-getting-going-again is mirrored by the play. I hope work.txt asks big questions about why we're all working so hard, and if we can't imagine a different sort of relationship to work. The show is about community and working together and play - it literally doesn't happen without the audience, so I'm thrilled it's happening in-person again at the Soho Theatre. I'm excited to get to work." The content is just a bit too pleased with itself, and forgets to make the point it came here for, but there is something in it. Perhaps if it spent less time trying to convince the naysayers.

At a few moments in the play, you will wonder where all of this will lead, and what the whole point of it is. And then you might realise that the play can’t really lead anywhere because there is no point to our work culture. There isn’t a point to spending most of our days in an office – maybe one should just lie down. Work.txt might stray off the rails slightly in a later section, which seems to locate incessant activity within a luxury holiday cruise – though its closing reel projecting work and achievement billions of years into the future has a Caryl Churchill-like dark surrealism. It’s an entertaining, thought-provoking hour that makes you realise just how deeply burnt some issues are in the psyche. Writer Nathan Ellis is a member of the BBC Drama Room and has several television projects in development. On stage he is known for his debut No One Is Coming to Save You as well as the critically acclaimed work.txt – a play without actors. Now under the direction of Blanche McIntyre, Soho Theatre will present the world premiere of Super High Resolution. The play, which focuses on the NHS, was shortlisted for the prestigious Verity Bargate Award, the judging panel of which included Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Ellis took time out to speak with us about his latest theatrical offering. In A Fairie Tale, Niall Moorjani seamlessly blends the threads of racial identity, queerness and folklore to create a fantastical and poignant picture of modern Scotland. Read the full review here. Photo: Niall Moorjani Nathan Ellis is a writer for stage and screen. In 2020 his play Super High Resolution was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award run by the Soho Theatre, coming in the top six out of 1500 submitted plays. His plays include No One Is Coming to Save You (a 'blazing debut' (the Guardian), published by Oberon) and work.txt (**** the Guardian). In 2021, he made Still Life, a digital play series commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse. He has TV projects in development with Greenacre Films and Balloon Entertainment. He is represented by Giles Smart at United Agents and is based between London and Berlin.And rather good we are, too. Fed lines by an officious “chat function”, we become an online community mesmerised by a social media brand manager who, having been frozen in digital limbo, is now a viral sensation. People log on just to stare. If that wasn’t self-referential enough, there’s also a theatre director responding to these “unprecedented times” by showcasing “ordinary people doing nothing digitally”. I struggled for a long while over whether work.txt was a successful reconception of work. There is a deceptiveness to the whole set up that that made it hard for me endorse its vision. I felt like it was out to get me. But in the weeks since, trying to piece together my own conception of what work I wanted to do, what I felt to be ‘good’ work, I found that the act of reconception is itself a spur to further reconception, and my own dissatisfactions with what work.txt did and how it worked were necessary and intentional. A question I often find myself asking is ‘why am I working so much?’ I think this is a pretty familiar question to 20-something year olds, fumbling for career ladders that have been melted down into crumpled heaps, anxiously aware of each other’s side hustles and striving to become a poorly defined ‘enough’. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Upcoming about your new play, Super High Resolution. What can you tell us about the play and what can audiences expect? Note 2: Huening Kai updated his MBTI type to ISTP on June 12, 20 21 (Fansign). Beomgyu updated his MBTI to ISFJ on August 12, 2023 (Weverse live).

Once a play is in the director’s hands, how much creative input do you generally get during the rehearsal process? Is it hard to let go of the baby , or do you fully embrace other creatives taking the reins or bringing their ideas to the table? Samuel Barnett's character's self-flagellating, frenetic, sense of humour is soon revealed to disguise a series of deep-rooted, unresolved traumas in an outrageously entertaining and endless surprising play. Read the full review here. Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic work.txt is a reminder of all the work we never needed to do, and all the other more important work that’s been left undone. And that feels extra-poignant now, as so many people realise that their working lives have meant – essentially – devoting years to climbing a tall and spindly tree, one that came toppling to the ground one night in March. You knew it was precarious, but not that its roots were so shallow.

Acting on stage can provide an immediate response to your work as the audience applaud – writing is a far more isolated endeavour. Do you find solace in that, or do you yearn for collaboration, either during the writing process or when it gets to the rehearsal room?

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