WORK.TXT Comes to Edinburgh Fringe Next Month

Following a critically acclaimed run at Soho Theatre earlier this year, audiences will take centre stage as work.txt comes to Summerhall for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. work.txt is a show without any actors, where the audience perform the whole show. It tells the story of a person in a city who has stopped working, and the audience must work together to attempt to figure out why. The audience read a projected text together out loud, with lines assigned by categories ("people with brown hair", "people who earn more than thirty thousand pounds a year"), follow instructions onstage and are fed lines by headphones as part of a collective, interactive experience. Nominated for an Offie Award (IDEA Production) during the Soho run and an Innovation Award at VAULT Festival 2020, winner of a Red Theatre International Award for Innovation, work.txt is written by Nathan Ellis who was previously a member of the Royal Court Invitation Writers' Supergroup 2018-19 and in 2020 was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award.  

The full play was nominated for an innovation award after a run at VAULT Festival, and was programmed at Incoming Festival and Summerhall for the Edinburgh Fringe before the pandemic. It was one of three productions invited to show work at the Caravan International Showcase in Brighton in May 2022.

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 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I'm excited to get to work." 

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). He is a member of the BBC Writersroom 2022, one of fifteen writers selected out of 5000 applicants.

Emily Davis is a producer of theatre and live events. She is producer at Coney, associate producer with Poltergeist Theatre who were named in the Guardian's 'best young theatre companies' and was previously producer at Farnham Maltings. 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).  

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