Fast Labour (NHB Modern Plays)

By Steve Waters

A powerful play about the growing culture of human exploitation in the UK, delving below the surface to reveal a personal account of life as a migrant worker.

In Ukraine, Victor had a business, a family and a home, but things have changed and he's fled to the UK in search of a better life. Now he's doing everything from gutting fish to picking carrots.

But Victor's a strong-minded man. He's not staying at the bottom of the economic food chain, he's going to build a business of his own and play the gang masters at their own game.

Steve Waters' play Fast Labour was first performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 2008 before transferring to the Hampstead Theatre in London.

'Original and intriguing... opens our eyes to social reality without striking easy moral postures' - Guardian

'A refreshingly unpartisan perspective and an ear for the comedy of British hypocrisy' - Telegraph

'Hotly topical... intelligent and ambitious... written with wit and vigour' - Financial Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Mar 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781780013565

Steve Waters

Steve Waters’ plays include Limehouse (Donmar Warehouse; Temple (Donmar Warehouse); Why Can’t We Live Together? (Menagerie Theatre/Soho/Theatre503); Europa, as co-author (Birmingham Repertory Theatre/Dresden State Theatre/Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz/Zagreb Youth Theatre); Ignorance/Jahiliyyah (Hampstead Downstairs); Little Platoons, The Contingency Plan, Capernaum (part of Sixty-Six Books; Bush, London); Fast Labour (Hampstead, in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse); Out of Your Knowledge (Menagerie Theatre/Pleasance, Edinburgh/East Anglian tour); World Music (Sheffield Crucible, and subsequent transfer to the Donmar Warehouse); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible); English Journeys, After the Gods (Hampstead); a translation/adaptation of a new play by Philippe Minyana, Habitats (Gate, London/ Tron, Glasgow); Flight Without End (LAMDA). Writing for television and radio includes Safe House (BBC4), The Air Gap, The Moderniser (BBC Radio 4), Scribblers and Bretton Woods (BBC Radio 3). Steve ran the Birmingham MPhil in Playwriting between 2006 and 2011 and now runs the MA Creative Writing: Script at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays, also published by Nick Hern Books.