Beyond Caring

by Alexander Zeldin

I'm a hard worker. I don't push him to the . . . You know I don't go out for breaks when I'm not supposed to. I don't stay in the loo when I'm not supposed to. If I was that kind of person I could have him done for discrimination . . . I just get on with things you know. Four people arrive to work the night shift in a meat factory. They meet for the first time. They are employed as cleaners by a temp agency. They are all on zero-hours contracts. Every shift, they clean. Every four hours, they take a break. They drink tea or coffee together. They read magazines. They chat. As it gets light, they go home or to another job. The cycle goes on. And on. Strangers. Until something stirs, until isolated people get too close to one another, too fast. Alexander Zeldin’s brutally honest and darkly humorous play, written through devising with the ensemble of the premiere production, exposes stories of an invisible class. It received its world premiere at The Yard on 1 July 2014 and transferred to the National Theatre's Temporary Theatre on 28 April 2015.

Genres: Plays

66 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2015

About the author

Alexander Zeldin is a writer and director for theatre. He trained on the Jerwood Young Directors course at The Old Vic and has taken part in residencies at the Egyptian Centre for Culture and Art and at Studio Emad Eddin in Cairo. His critically-acclaimed play, Beyond Caring, which examined the effects of zero hours contracts had its World Premiere at The Yard Theatre in Hackney in 2014, before transferring to the Temporary Theatre at the National Theatre in London in 2015. In 2015, Alex was the recipient of The Quercus Trust Award and was appointed as Associate Director at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Beyond Caring toured the UK in 2016 and his play LOVE opened at the National Theatre.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Austerity Britain. Zero-hours work in all its glory.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually scripts 'created by the company' are not quite up to speed - but this slice of life dramedy about workers cleaning up a meat processing facility is spot on.

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[Konstanze]

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