Emily Davis is a producer of theatre and live events. She is producer at Farnham Maltings and associate producer with Poltergeist Theatre who were named in the Guardian's 'best young theatre companies'. 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). Writing for theatre isn’t actually so solitary. I spend a lot of time on my own, but the actual writing time is quite limited – you could get up tomorrow and retype every word I’ve ever written and you would be done by teatime. It’s a complete joy working out solutions to problems on your own and imagining how what you’re doing might end up onstage, but you always have in your mind that eventually it will be in a room with other people – that’s why being a playwright is the best job in the world in my opinion.

You’re currently developing some projects for TV and you are part of the BBC Drama Room. How differently do you approach a screenplay to a stage play? These vignettes are bizarre and abstract, and whether dancing or prowling, they flow effortlessly between creepy, funny, erotic, and playful, bouncing off the energy of the audience and the excellent soundscapes. Read our full review here. Photo: Anne Tetzlaff I struggled for a long while over whether work.txt was a successful reconception of work. There is a deceptiveness to the whole set up that that made it hard for me endorse its vision. I felt like it was out to get me. But in the weeks since, trying to piece together my own conception of what work I wanted to do, what I felt to be ‘good’ work, I found that the act of reconception is itself a spur to further reconception, and my own dissatisfactions with what work.txt did and how it worked were necessary and intentional. 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.Besides which: it was a great piece of theatre. It was gripping, satisfying, discomforting, with an elusive glimmer of hope I couldn’t quite catch, but knew I would go on seeking. 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. 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.

A surprisingly unimaginative audience participation take on work culture, which asks its audience to take a DIY approach to a night at the theatre. work.txt | Soho Theatre | Until 12 Mar 2022Work.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. Part monologue, part cabaret, Rob Madge shows off their palpable star power in My Son's A Queer (But What Can You Do?). Read our full review here. Photo: Mark Senior 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.