work.txt (Modern Plays)

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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. His father is also a musician and released an album in 2007 called ‘Virtues In Us’ in both English and Chinese. What’s really interesting about work_from_home– and other livestreams that ask for audience interaction – is the way they work against that strangeness, putting you in the metaphorical room and keeping you there. Zoom holds you accountable as an audience member. You can’t wander off or send a text – and if you slurp your tea, everyone else will see you doing it. Much like going to work, the prospect feels a bit daunting at first, but I came away energised and buzzing with ideas. A kids’ show with the thematic depth to appeal to child-free adults too, The Girl and the Dragon is a joyous adventure in storytelling performed by Niall Moorjani and Minnie Wilkinson. Read the full review here. Photo: Harry Elletson

The trouble with a show like this ultimately ends up being the volunteer cast. On our visit, the audience (cast) is mainly comprised of actor types, un-phased by an impromptu performance, which makes things feel a little stagey and less authentic than ideal. On the other hand, you could imagine other volunteers freezing, or struggling with the dialogue they are given to recite – and the show might be a little hard for dyslexic people, say, or those with other learning disabilities. Gen Z performers from Ukraine and the Czech Reupublic combine for a powerful performance exploring connectivity and freedom. Read our full review. Photo: Lesley MartinWhen did writing itself come into your life? And when did you realise it was something you wanted to do for a living? Temping is a jewel-like show, elegantly paced with a constant flow of ‘work’, and, of course, slowly dawning revelations about office life, unexpected relationships, petty squabbles. But behind the mundane trivia of work lurk real lives and hopes – too easily snuffed out by your own complicity, and even by murkier activities that are only hinted at. There’s a limit to how far Dutch Kills can go before shattering the illusion they’ve so carefully created, so in many ways Temping is full of ideas that could be far more fully developed in an alternative format. Nonetheless, it’s a quietly moving, slightly unsettling, miniature masterpiece of a show. Everyone should see work.txt. The play, if it can be called a play, is an immersive show experienced collectively through audience interaction. Because of this experimental quirk, your experience of the will obviously differ from mine. This does make it somewhat difficult to review having only seen it once, as it’s entirely possible that the experiment lives and dies depending on who is (or isn’t) in the room. 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.

It opens with the usual Dublin Fringe Festival notice: welcome to the show, please take note of emergency exits and switch off mobile phones. Meanwhile, words are projected on to the wall of the theatre telling the audience to ignore the instructions and to leave their phones on. This sets the tone for the show, with the projection acting as a sort of all-seeing eye. I do carry a notepad around. I think that’s a writer’s prerogative! But really all my best inspiration happens when I’m walking around and reading. I also find a lot of inspiration in seeing other people’s work – it’s incredibly helpful to spend time thinking about what I like and don’t like in other people’s art to try to hone my own craft. I find it particularly helpful to see theatre I don’t like very much; I’ve had some of my most exciting ideas while incredibly bored in an audience. Hopefully some writers will come and hate my play and write something brilliant as a result! Happy Meal is a big-hearted, funny romcom, showing love between trans people with a sharp script and great onstage chemistry. Read our full review. Photo: Lottie Amor 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. work.txt is going on tour internationally next year, Super High Resolution is being produced in German in Kassel in February. Alongside the screenwriting stuff, I’m also in the R&D phase of a new experimental play I am directing about surveillance capitalism and I am writing a new play about hiking.

Following the course of a regular workday in a major city, in a major company, someone suddenly and without an apparent reason lies down in the office. The internet is outraged, the story goes viral, the art world is interested, and the parents of said person are on a cruise trying to enjoy their holiday. That is more or less the story of work.txt. However, the magic of this play really lies in the fact that you – the audience – are acting it all out. Work demands focus. It demands being at the right place, at the right time, wearing the right clothes, being in the right mindset. It feels like it’s really hard to do good work at a time of persistent strangeness and wrongness and uncertainty, when the structures that bring us together have been worn away. And the same is true of watching a performance. He studied at Yongmun Middle School and Lila Art Highschool, but has been transferred to Hanlim Multi Art School since the second half of 2019.

There’s a way of participating in this play that would leave you feeling like you had completely torn apart the concept of work. That you, with your fellow audience members-turned-performers, had laboured in ways that were fun, productive, new. That was not the way I experienced it. For me, it was a precise and detailed answer to the question ‘how are we made to work without conscious intention or realisation?’, delivered by making me do work without conscious intention and only a slowly dawning realisation. 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 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

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Work.txt is a show about work, that – appropriately – gets the audience to do the heavy lifting. It replicates the sense of togetherness that comes from pulling together to perform a task, even as it makes the nature of work itself feel more and more problematised and futile.

The show nearly gets to some interesting points about zero hour contracts, but never really arrives at the point of saying something truly impactful. Perhaps if an Uber or Deliveroo driver was in the audience, and allowed to relate their experiences, there could be some more interesting results. But ultimately, the script is Big Brother, and we have to follow our instructions. Sami Ibrahim's latest show is a captivating story depicting the callousness of our immigration system. Ultimately, the performances in Violent Burst... compose a powerful odyssey of both humour and moving sentiment. Read the full review here. Photo: Conor Jatter With creative yet simple staging, and a cyclical structure, Some Kind of Theatre's The Grandmothers Grimm makes for a bold and moving tribute to the overlooked and marginalised women present in the story of the Brothers Grimm. Read our full review here. Photo: Grant Jamieson The indistinctness of work in modern society does not simply result in ‘working too much’ but in a deeper problem that creates the need to overwork. As our work becomes less visible, we feel that we are not working enough, must work harder. Simultaneously, the fruits of our labours become increasingly obscured, making it more difficult for us to recognise the value in our work. Chloe and Natasha's And Then The Rodeo Burned Down is a delightfully queer, sexy and foolish mix of clowning, physical theatre and dance. Read our full review here. Photo: Chloe and Natasha work.txt @ Summerhall (★★★★★)

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?’. Say It Again, Sorry? present a delightfully interactive and uproariously funny take on Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. A feast for Fringe-goers of all levels of experience. Read the full review here. Photo: Dylan Silk Formally, the play recalls David Greig’s short two-hander Fragile in which the audience, reading from a screen, played one of the characters. Ellis, who has something of Greig’s ironic sense of humour, goes one step further by doing away with actors altogether. Probably not what Equity wants to hear right now, but the stars of this New Diorama theatre and Incoming festival production are us.