“There’s no didactic element in this play,” director Luke Rogers says of the new work coming up for Canberra Youth Theatre – Work, But This Time Like You Mean It.

“No, it’s nothing like that, it’s highly entertaining, very funny. It is also chaotic and confusing, as if people are living in a fever dream… it’s a very different piece of theatrical work.” 

A play that shows kids wasting their young lives away, one shift at a time, it’s set in a fast-food chicken takeaway shop.

Kathleen Kershaw has designed an abstract set which Rogers says is physically a hard set to be on – it’s like a giant slippery-dip.

Work takes a sharp look at the world of work for young people, and as playwright Honor Webster-Mannison puts it: “Everyone remembers their first job – no matter how much some might want to forget it. It’s a rite of passage.” 

The title, one of many such names that appear throughout the play, riffs on the word “work”.

Webster-Mannison, Rogers thinks, is much the same age as the Youth Theatre cast who’ll be performing the play – mid to late 20s – so can easily resonate with their language.

“Every time a young person reads it they’ve gone, ‘it feels right, like being a young person’,” he says. 

Talking of young people, it turns out that in Canberra, employee laws say it’s illegal to employ a young person under 15 years old, unless the employment is considered “light work”. 

But it all depends on how you view age, relatively. 

“I’m not a kid, I’m 13 years old,” as one of the young characters says.

Work, But This Time Like You Mean It is the result of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2022 Emerging Playwright Commission.

This is a commission with a difference. For it does not deal in finished scripts, but rather with “pitches” or ideas.

It’s the second such work to get a full production; Joanna Richards’ play You Can’t Tell Anyone was performed at The Courtyard Studio last year. 

The 2023 recipient, Sydney playwright Sonia Dodd, is now in development for her play, How to Destroy the Beep Test in Five Days, and the company is now selecting for the fourth commission.

It’s a national competition where young writers from all around the country pitch an idea.

The winner gets a full commission, bringing them to Canberra over the year for creative development, always in collaboration with Youth Theatre members. The final works are published.

Webster-Mannison is from Melbourne, but the work is all done in Canberra.

“Where they come from is not the point, but they will be working with young artists from the ACT,” Rogers stresses.

“It makes Canberra a destination for new work.”

Work, But This Time Like You Mean It runs for about an hour but there’s a relentless chaos to it, Rogers says the cast is physically exhausted and it reflects the chaos and speed, in some of the industries that employ young people who are asked to do everything as fast as possible, “so much rigour and repetition,” he says.

“It’s quite a rhythmical play with a really strong musicality, not in the sense of being a musical, but the language getting into the muscle memory of the actors.”

Webster-Mannison contests the idea that first jobs are character-building, rather suggesting they’re preparing people to join the machine, which is the workforce.

The end is what Roger says is “a quite an unhinged piece of performance – by no means irrational. It is existential chaos. It’s about young people working in the fast-food industry, but it’s so much fun to go on that ride with them.”

Work, But This Time Like You Mean It, Canberra Youth Theatre, The Courtyard Studio, September 20-29.