Sydney Premiere of smash-hit comedy about overworked, underpaid, teenage wage-slaves

After wowing critics and audiences alike in its sell-out, debut Canberra season last year, Canberra Youth Theatre is thrilled to bring Australian playwright Honor Webster-Mannison’s smash-hit comedy Work, But This Time Like You Mean It to Sydney for a limited, one-week run at The Rebel Theatre, Walsh Bay from Wednesday 15th October to Saturday 18th October 2025.

Directed by Canberra Youth Theatre’s Artistic Director and CEO, Luke Rogers, and featuring a stellar cast of eight emerging actors, Webster-Mannison’s darkly surreal new work is an unhinged, deepfryer dive into the lives of overworked, underpaid, teenage wage-slaves, trapped in a dystopian fried chicken time loop.

 

 

Neon lighting has dried out your eyeballs. The grease has permeated your sneakers. You think you can hear salt. A group of fast-food workers are just trying to get through another shift. They’re underpaid and overworked, and the customers keep coming and time is moving backwards, and they need to stop working.

Luke Rogers :

We’re taking twelve artists to Sydney, many of whom will be touring a show for the first time, with an ambitious new work that challenges expectations for what theatre created by young people can achieve. Everyone remembers their first job …seemingly wasting your young life away, one shift at a time, for significantly less than minimum wage. Work, But… is a completely unhinged, chaotic exploration of this universal rite of passage.

Melbourne-based theatre-maker and Work, But… playwright, Honor Webster-Mannison:

,A lot of what happens in this play is true. It is the culmination of a two-year creative journey informed by the thoughts and experiences of Canberra Youth Theatre’s emerging artists, conversations with friends about their first jobs, and Stuart Tannock’s exploration of exploitation in the working lives of young people. KFC Australia’s website states that ninety percent of team members are under the age of twenty-five.

The junior wage is a stark example of the way society values young people’s labour less than adult labour. And although young workers are more likely to face wage theft and have their legal working conditions violated, they are far less likely to be in a union than workers above the age of twenty-five.

Work, But This Time Like You Mean It is the winner of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2022 Emerging Playwright Commission, an annual initiative supporting emerging Australian playwrights to bring brand-new, full-length works to the stage.

 

 

Chaotic and joyously unhinged, don’t miss the hottest, tastiest, existential-crisis-est show in town. This tour is supported by the Australian Theatre for Young People and the ACT Government. Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Playwright Commission is supported by Holding Redlich.

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Season Details

Venue: The Rebel Theatre| Walsh Bay
Date: 15 – 18 Oct 2025

For more information click HERE