Deep into the eight-hour-long theatre production 8/8/8: Work, dutiful audience members began shaving the naked body of Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder had stepped on to a mini Segway to glide around the room, stark naked but for a cowboy hat and a single wireless earbud, delivering a speech that Star Trek’s William Shatner once gave after disembarking from a Bezos-owned Blue Origin space rocket.
“Amazon was in the news. Workers not having time in their lunch break to get far enough across the warehouse to go to the bathroom. A lot of pissing in bottles,” says Marcus McKenzie, who created 8/8/8: Work with Harriet Gillies and played Bezos that afternoon in 2022, a performance staged at the Rising festival in Melbourne. “There was just so much Amazon lore, late capitalist satire ripe for the picking.”
It was eight hours long, but Work was only part one in McKenzie and Gillies’ 8/8/8 triptych, exploring the utopian daily structure of eight hours each of work, rest and play. The eight-hour work day arrived in Australia in 1856, when stonemasons in Melbourne marched on Victorian parliament, but those numbers are now a distant dream for many of us. And so are eight hours of sleep – but part two, 8/8/8: Rest, will debut at Rising on Friday.
The first spark for the 8/8/8 cycle began while McKenzie and Gillies were performing in the Melbourne Fringe festival at Trades Hall, a building emblazoned throughout with the numbers 888. They secured funding through Rising’s commissioning program after rampaging through the festival’s boardroom as nappy-wearing Amazon delivery boxes during a now legendary pitch. Should part three, Play, be commissioned, they’re open to performing the 24-hour cycle in full.
“We made 8/8/8: Work when the country was in lockdown. We had nothing else going on except staring at the wall and talking about these ideas. This time round we’re making a show about rest, back in this post-Covid rat race, trying to cram it in with making a living and other projects. The irony of the project is never far from the surface,” says Gillies during a rehearsal break.
“This show about rest is absolutely killing us. I’ve never worked harder in my life, never felt this stressed and exhausted,” she jokes (sort of).
Leading up to Rest’s opening, they’re rehearsing five days a week with their team of collaborators and spending weekends writing new material. There’s work but no rest – and the blurry delineations between the two are up for examination in the new production.
“We’re super interested in the neoliberal model [of rest] as something you have to carve out pockets of, individual moments of rest in this machine. You have to find it, dig it up and claim it for yourself,” says McKenzie, his voice escalating theatrically.
Being eight hours long, running from 9am to 5pm, Work was never rehearsed in full before its single showing in 2022. Attendees were briefed in advance with strict instructions that late entry would be denied and no passouts would be issued. A prominent theatre critic left mid-performance and was refused re-entry. If only they’d stayed till the end: after hours of agonising induction forms, cringe-inducing team building exercises and brilliant blood-soaked office horror, the performers and audience shared their experiences of burnout. Tears were shed. It was profoundly cathartic.
“I remember the nurse who was scared she and her friends [would] never fit [back into society] after Covid because their senses of humour had gotten so dark working in the hospitals,” says Gillies. “It was such a high-stakes moment … I’ve been in the theatre so many times when audience interaction just flops. Everyone had this experience where they wanted to pour out and share.”
Rest will be staged for a marathon three performances over consecutive days, starting at 9pm and finishing at 5am. For anyone worried about nodding off, never fear.
“You know when you go to the theatre and it’s like a two-hour show, the lights go down and it’s warm and you feel really sleepy – we’re interested in inviting people to maybe explore that, rather than it be a taboo,” says McKenzie.
An eight-hour performance is a big ask of any audience and one they don’t make lightly.
“We’re very grateful that the audience are signing on knowing it’s an eight-hour show,” adds Gillies. “I think a huge part of what made Work really special is everyone at the end of the show really felt like they’d achieved something. The artists and the audience were all clapping each other at the end. That’s definitely going to be an energy I hope we carry into this show with these audiences.”
• 8/8/8: Rest runs on 7–9 June at Arts Centre Melbourne. Nick Buckley was an employee of Rising over its 2021 and 2022 festival programs
