You Stupid Darkness!
“I just think it’s, you know, important to look at the good things that are happening as well.”
Everything’s been falling apart for a while now. In a cramped, crumbling office four volunteers spend a few hours every Tuesday night on the phone to strangers telling them everything is going to be ok. As the outside world disintegrates around them, Frances, Joey, Angie and Jon teeter on the edge of their own personal catastrophes. Their hopes and fears become entangled as they try, desperately, to connect with the callers and with each other.
An urgent play from rising star Sam Steiner about the struggle for optimism and community amid the chaos of a collapsing world.
“Hello. Brightline. You’re through to someone you can talk to…”
February 2019/
The Drum, Plymouth Theatre Royal
January - February 2020/
Southwark Playhouse
Photography by Matt Austin
Direction / James Grieve
Design / Amy Cook
Lighting / Peter Small
Sound / Dominic Kennedy
Movement / Annie-Lunette Deakin-Foster
David Carlyle
Andrew Finnigan
Becci Gemmell
Lydia Larson
Jenni Maitland
Andy Rush
“Sam Steiner makes us beam as the world burns… When everything is falling apart, in the world or in our own private apocalypses, this hilariously bleak show suggests it might just be alright, so long as there’s someone there to listen.”
The Guardian
“Desperately funny… a work of extraordinary observation and overflowing empathy… a moving, original, and ultimately hopeful production.”
The Stage
