The drive for efficiency is everywhere these days, seeping into every aspect of society. But can we become too efficient – as people and as a society? Is efficiency the enemy of creativity? When does efficiency so alter a society that it’s impossible to get back what we’ve lost?
These questions and thoughts were the starting point for The Opportunity of Efficiency. At the same time that I was commissioned by the New National Theatre Tokyo, I’d also been thinking about Big Pharma – how a few, massive companies dominate the global pharmaceutical market and how that market can be manipulated and controlled through the patent system and international “cooperation” between governments and corporations.
In this play, a scientist makes a potential great discovery – but what if that discovery threatens big business or the interest of nations? On the flip side, what if that discovery just leads to more? More consumption, more drugs, more cancer, more waste? Maybe we’re better off without it? Maybe efficiency isn’t so bad after all?
The play took shape in Wales (even though it’s to be performed in Tokyo, it’s not specifically set there – I see it as a small bio company on an industrial estate on the outskirts of a town). It was influenced by talking to scientists about the difficulties in developing new drugs, by my own experience of a “time and motion study” while working in an office years ago and the growing clamour to prune back every aspect of society.
It was also moulded by a trip to Japan. While there, I was struck by the uncertainty in the country with regard to what sort of place it will be in the future; following the recent disasters there seemed a need for efficiency in the here and now but also an opportunity to shape a better future.
I first worked with Alan Harris when we developed the first ever play for National Theatre Wales: A Good Night Out in the Valleys. The idea for the show was to interview and meet with hundreds of people in the South Wales Valleys – an area that used to be the proud centre of the mining industry in Wales, but in recent details a place of much change and uncertainty. Alan wrote a wonderful play, interweaving dozens of stories. Underlying every story, however, wasn’t the kind of despair and nostalgia that a lot of people expected from our research, but a wild, anarchic and very funny sense that ordinary people can live truly extraordinary lives.
So when New National Theatre Tokyo asked me to suggest a writer to work on a play for them – someone who would respond to Japan today in an unexpected way – Alan was one of the first names I put on the list. I knew that he could come up with something both relevant and surprising. And with The Opportunity of Efficiency he has done just that. I’m thrilled to be directing this witty, unusual and very relevant new play.
It’s exciting and challenging for me to be working with a Japanese cast, using an interpreter in rehearsals, and also working with a Japanese design team. I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot from the superb actors, artists and producers I have met at the NNTT. And I believe that between all of us we may create a truly original piece of theatre.
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