WORK, BUT THIS TIME
LIKE YOU MEAN IT
by HONOR WEBSTER-MANNISON
Canberra Youth Theatre
Canberra Theatre Centre 2024
Director Luke Rogers
Designer Kathleen Kershaw
Lighting & Video Designer Ethan Hamill
Sound Designer & Composer Patrick Haesler
Stage Manager Rhiley Winnett
Cast
Georgie Bianchini
Tom Bryson
Hannah Cornelia
Kathleen Dunkerley
Quinn Goodwin
Matthew Hogan
Sterling Notley
Emma Piva
Photography Andrew Sikorski
World Premiere
I might spend my last moments asking someone if they want large or regular chips. I might die in this polo shirt. Oh my God I might die in this hat. They will find my fossilised remains and then carbon test me and find out that I was wearing this hat.
Neon lighting has dried out your eyeballs. The grease has permeated your sneakers. You think you can hear salt. A group of fast food workers are just trying to get through another shift. They’re underpaid and overworked and the customers keep coming and time is moving backwards and they need to stop working.
Work, But This Time Like You Mean It is a darkly surreal comedy about young people’s first experiences in the workplace. It’s about having a good work ethic on less-than-minimum wage. It’s about perseverance when you just want to curl up under the counter and cry. It’s an unhinged, deep-fryer-dive into deeply human relationships, forged within the most alienating of circumstances.
It’s fricken tasty.
Work, But This Time Like You Mean It was the winner of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2022 Emerging Playwright Commission.
Nominated for Outstanding Original Work at the 2024 Ovation Awards
“A sharp-shooting shot at the employment of young people in the fast food industry. Fast is the word. In fact frenetic may be more like it. Under Luke Roger’s energetic direction, the hard working ensemble explodes with vitality… a very clever, witty, surreal satire… the kind of work that one might expect from a youth theatre concerned about the welfare and rights of its young emerging artists. The company bursts with talent and promise.”
– Peter Wilkins, Canberra Critics Circle
“a madcap, skit-like experience full of joyful comedy that gives cast an opportunity to let their hair down and get a little random… Work, But This Time Like You Meant It, was not afraid to turn things inside out and upside down. Once this play made it clear it wasn’t going to follow the rules, there was little choice but to go with it – and let its cast take you on a journey. And it felt about as good as a cheeky bit of fried chicken you weren’t planning on eating, but somehow seemed to hit the spot.
– Arne Sjostedt, City News
