In Development

AN INTERVIEW¹ CONSULTATION² TRAINING³ SCHEME⁴ ON BEHALF OF JOBCENTRE PLUS⁵.

Person Spec is not a theatre show. It is a recruitment event. And the audience must interview and appraise the evening’s exciting new candidate for an unspecified work opportunity.

Georgia, our candidate, can feel herself on the precipice of this new job and a new life. They’ll jump, if you say how high. And fortunately for her, Representatives from Zantino Recruitment (the audience) are there to help.

Person Spec is about work. It’s about unemployment, uberisation, zero-hour contracts, discrimination, and so-called ‘unskilled labour’. It’s about the new relationships with work that have emerged. It’s about how we cope with needing to prove that our labour is valuable. It’s about what we ask of ourselves and each other to do that. It’s about all the things that our high school career advisors never predicted.

We’re reversing the traditional role of the audience, enrolling them to interview a candidate for an exciting role. Over the course of an evening, the recruitment process reveals itself, and the implications of the audience’s participation.

¹ Surreal ²Political ³Participatory ⁴Work-in-development ⁵Absolutely not

A Backstory

En desarrollo

ENTREVISTA¹ CONSULTA² CAPACITACIÓN ³ SISTEMA⁴ EN REPRESENTACIÓN DE JOBCENTRE PLUS⁵.

Person Spec es una pieza que trata el tema del trabajo. Hablamos del desempleo, los contratos de cero horas,la llamada “uberización”, la discriminación laboral y el trabajo no cualificado. Hablamos de la transformación que está sufriendo nuestra relación con el trabajo. Hablamos de cómo afrontamos la necesidad constantemente de demostrar que nuestro trabajo es valioso. Hablamos de lo que nos exigimos a nosotros mismos y a los demás. Este espectáculo habla de todas esas cosas que nuestros orientadores del instituto nunca pudieron predecir.

El show invierte el papel tradicional del público y otorga al espectador el rol de un entrevistador de una multinacional que está en busca de un nuevo trabajador. A lo largo de la función se irá revelando un proceso de reclutamiento frío y mecanizado del que el público formará parte. Cuando las luces se apaguen una pregunta asaltara a la audiencia: ¿Cuáles han sido sus implicaciones en este proceso de selección?

¹Surrealista ²Político ³Participativo ⁴Trabajo en desarrollo ⁵Rotundamente no

A Backstory

“In 2017 writer Andrew Cook was commissioned to produce a series of role plays for a large recruitment company wanting to develop its hiring strategy. The specification was, ‘to discover and create workers flexible to creating their own future’. Undergoing extreme financial hardship, Andrew completed most of the work in Manchester’s Medical Evaluations Unit, while also participating in a fifteen day medical trial for which he received £3219. Under extreme financial stress, Andrew’s mental stability at this time began to falter. However he did complete the role plays, mostly from his bed on the ward. The trial produced no symptoms or effects, and as far as we understand the drug is now on the market. However, by the time Andrew emerged from the Unit although physically healthy he had by his own account (in a Facebook post and series of tweets) “turned from the meagre balcony of his sanity” to go “freely through the hotel of another place altogether.” Today Andrew is fine. Everything in this performance is from the role plays Andrew wrote in the document he eventually and submitted one hour after his deadline. That document is here tonight, and all that remains is what will be written by us. By you. Andrew was never paid for the work he completed.”