Output details

Fast Labour

This play explores and dramatises the impacts of illegal migration on the British economy and on the daily lives of workers as well as analyses the forces that drive that mechanism. It represents an attempt to move beyond 'verbatim' accounts of a contemporary issue to a more fictive and 'backstage' analysis, rooted in a reinvention of naturalistic form combined with epic techniques. The research process took several forms: Waters tracked the forces at work in the contemporary rural economy - meeting with gang-masters in the summer of 2005, interviewing trade union representatives, migrant workers and employers in the region of East Anglia; he also interviewed journalists such as Felicity Lawrence from the Guardian. In September 2005 Waters visited Ukraine to talk to young migrants in Lvov and Kiev and visited the remote home town of the play’s key character in Eastern Ukraine as well as talking to Ukrainian émigrés in the UK and anthropologists working on migration. Elements of this research integral to the play also featured in interviews with national and local newspapers during the staging of the show (Spring 2008) - The Yorkshire Post, the Guardian, Metro and Radio 4’s Front Row. Artistically the form of the play emerged through workshops at National Theatre Studio (October, 2005), Hampstead Theatre (March 2007) and West Yorkshire Playhouse (September 2007).