Output details

Rig 83

Commissioning Theatre: National Theatre Studio, 2012

This play was written on attachment at the National Theatre Studio. The research imperative was to try to find a way to dramatise the influence North Sea oil has had on the UK, both economically and socially.

The UK oil industry was the first to be deregulated in the 1970s, despite forceful trade union opposition, and so should be considered an important historical moment that began the move to wider deregulation, including financial deregulation in the 1980s, the so called ‘Big Bang’.

The play dramatises a little known ‘world of work’, showing some of the techniques used in drilling for oil, as well as the psychological effects this work has on the oil-workers due to the lack of safety, the power of the sea, the long work days, and the sense of imprisonment that workers feel on rigs.

In the 1970s and early 1980s oil drilling was, in the West, a predominantly US industry. The play investigates the little-known history of Vietnam veterans in the North Sea and asks whether their experience in Vietnam affected their attitudes as oil-workers. The play is set during and then soon after the marriage between Charles and Diana in 1981

Research for the play took place at the North Aberdeen Oral History project, located in Aberdeen University Library; as well as drawing on the author’s own experience roughnecking on rigs from 1978 to1981.