When we spoke to North East playwright Alison Carr last week ahead of the premiere of her new play All At Sea, she mentioned there was some interesting news on the way.
She wasn’t kidding. The writer has been awarded a prestigious Peter Shaffer Commission to develop a major new play with Newcastle’s Unfolding Theatre.
The £7,294 award, administered by the National Theatre in collaboration with the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation, will support That Friday Feeling (but Friday is the Apocalypse), a darkly funny play about closures, endings and what we leave behind.
Set in the offices of the London Gazette in the near future, it follows the clerks responsible for officially recording company closures as the world around them begins to shut down too.
Businesses and jobs are disappearing, but so are species, lakes and coral reefs. Digital systems are failing and the people left behind carry on documenting it all – at least for as long as they can.
It’s not entirely unfamiliar territory for Alison. Her comedy The Last Quiz Night on Earth also contemplated the end of the world, albeit from the rather different surroundings of a pub quiz. That Friday Feeling approaches the apocalypse from another reassuringly ordinary setting: the office.
“I’m fascinated by closures because they’re everywhere, but we don’t always talk about what happens afterwards,” said Alison.
“A business closes, a shop disappears, a job ends, a species goes extinct – and somehow life carries on. I wanted to explore that huge idea through the very ordinary world of office workers doing their jobs. It’s a story about endings, but I hope it’s also funny, warm and full of life.”
The play has already brought together something of a North East creative supergroup.
It began with a conversation between Unfolding Theatre and actor and former brewer Carl Kennedy about what it means to close a business. Kennedy is also a member of long-running North East improv troupe The Suggestibles.
A subsequent research and development week brought together Unfolding’s artistic director Annie Rigby, Alison, Carl, designer Imogen Cloët, actor Karen Traynor and Field Music’s David Brewis, who is sound designer and performer on the project.
It was during that development period that the team discovered company closures are formally recorded in the London Gazette – providing the jumping-off point for Alison’s imagined office at the end of the world.
As the play progresses, the mundane and the apocalyptic increasingly collide. The billionaires and tech bros have left for space, desks and filing cabinets are being dismantled for fuel and spare parts, and someone will eventually have to decide whether to stay behind to file the final notice: the closure of the Gazette itself.
Annie said: “Alison has an incredible ability to take enormous ideas and make them feel funny and human. With this new work, we’re interested in closure in all its forms – and what we do when the things we thought were permanent turn out not to be.
“This is a brilliant opportunity to champion one of the North East’s most exciting writers on a national platform. We’re delighted to be developing this work with Alison and to see where this extraordinary idea can take us.”
The Peter Shaffer Commission, named in honour of the Equus and Amadeus playwright, supports the development of larger-scale original plays with three or more characters. Seven commissions are awarded annually, including five through partnerships with regional theatres and companies.
Unfolding Theatre plans to develop and premiere That Friday Feeling (but Friday is the Apocalypse) in the North East before exploring opportunities for a national tour.
Meanwhile, Alison’s All At Sea opens at Live Theatre, Newcastle on September 24, running until October 10 before transferring to Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre from October 16-31.