‘What galvanises me to get up in the morning and write is what is making me angry, upsetting me, frightening me,” says playwright Emily White. Like her previous plays, White’s next production, Joseph K and the Cost of Living, opening at Swansea Grand next month, seeks to make the political personal. It is a reimagining of Kafka’s nightmarish The Trial, whose protagonist is unexpectedly arrested but not told what for and always maintains his innocence.
White was a teenager when she first read the novel, about “being trapped in this kind of bureaucratic machine”, but she returned to it more recently after feeling that there was a “creeping authoritarianism” happening, with marginalised people’s rights “being clawed back by governments all over the world”. She continues: “In my version, it’s a story about state-led persecution of particular individuals and the reasons for that. And, in the background, we are very much today in Britain, in this world that we’re living in right now.” The play is set, she says, in a country that feels as if it is teetering on the brink of resistance and revolution. As such, the story incorporates food banks, homelessness, environmental protests, strikes and the government’s attempt to limit direct action.
Still, White says she wants to make sure her plays are fun too, and hopes this one will inspire those who watch it. “A theatre production can’t change the world, but I think it can make people think about something in a different way … When bankers get £500,000 bonuses, while nurses have to use food banks to feed their families, something is very wrong.”
The theatre industry is facing the impact of a bleak economic reality too, with the cost of living crisis and the hangover from the pandemic. Last month, Oldham Coliseum announced the cancellation of all its performances from late March, owing to its Arts Council England (ACE) funding having been entirely cut. Stiflingly low wages have prompted the trade union Equity to launch a campaign calling for a 17% weekly pay rise for performers and stage management working in the West End.
“People are leaving the industry, to be completely honest,” says White. “There is a massive exodus of people that don’t come from wealthy backgrounds and so can’t keep doing it. Which is really, really sad.” She fears for the knock-on effect of funding cuts on the type of work that is staged. “Theatre is in danger of just being a museum piece – not current and not tackling the things that are going on right now around the world, and that’s really important in order to not become obsolete.”
White’s play, staged as part of a three-part project by National Theatre Wales, is among a wave of works exploring the harsh impacts of the cost of living crisis. These include Travis Alabanza and Debbie Hannan’s Sound of the Underground, at London’s Royal Court, which considers the precarious wages for drag performers, and Northern Stage’s adaptation of the film I, Daniel Blake, opening in May.
At Colchester’s Mercury theatre from March is They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!, Deborah McAndrew’s adaptation of a 1974 Italian farce by Dario Fo and Franca Rame. The original depicted the looting of a supermarket in protest at economic crisis. What can we expect from McAndrew’s version? “A kind of scattergun, state of the nation moment,” she says, envisioning an “anarchic evening with hopefully one or two moments of reflection and genuine rage”. In the mix for the final script are gags about Matt Hancock and a possible bit on Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. “It just gets more and more surreal,” adds McAndrew. “It’s all a big meta joke. There’s lots of fourth wall breaking.” It will be hard-hitting, too, including an exploration of police corruption.
McAndrew’s own theatre company, Claybody, in Stoke-on-Trent, was among those to receive an uplift in ACE funding, but she is aware of the bigger picture. She hears from friends working in the West End that “there are big problems there just because people can’t afford to go”, and cites the pandemic as a factor behind staffing shortages backstage. “There’s a particular crisis in stage management. They work really difficult hours … I think the pandemic did affect people and made [them] rethink their lives.”
But she remains optimistic about better days to come. “As a theatre person, I believe there is nothing quite like a shared experience in a room with actors right in front of you doing that thing, and performing that story for you, as an audience – the unique dynamic of every show,” she says. “I don’t believe that will ever go away, and that people will not want it.”
