devised by SOSE

directed by Alex Wells

written by Aaron Henne

In development workshops from January-March.

FREE Public staged reading on April 8 @ 8pm.

“THE LABOR PROJECT” is a company-devised theater piece conceived by ensemble member Alex Wells that illuminates a coming-to-consciousness among today’s working class about how present day attitudes regarding "work" were generated by the working class of the 19th century. By drawing parallels between the experiences of the working class during the Industrial Revolution and those of the project participants currently working at their various places of employment, THE LABOR PROJECT seeks to enable the modern-day workforce to better understand how "systems of working" and "on-the-clock" have become the framework for American life.

There was a time before "time". That is, there was a world which existed, not all that long ago, where the human body's natural rhythms and the rising of the sun determined much of our existence and our life experiences. Many, if not all, worked for themselves, to feed themselves. People were just that, people, not machines created to pump out products or portions of products. Have human beings become the modern-day machine, laboring to serve some unknowable supervisor or some indefinable marketplace?

Today, time is a centerpiece of modern society. The tick tock of the clock provides the backdrop for so many of our days. Using E. P. Thompson's "The Making of The English Working Class" as inspiration, Son of Semele Ensemble is creating a theater piece that uses the historical facts of the English Industrial Revolution to speak directly to the dilemmas facing the labor force of today.

The argument has been made that the working class didn't simply appear, that it, in fact, was birthed over a long period of time with riots, religious pleas and deaths along the way. SOSE is exploring the notion that we, the modern-day workforce, are also going through a time of birth, giving life to a new way of existing under the rapidly increasing expectations of the modern world. Manual labor seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, replaced by computer chip processors and automated machines. How do we, as humans, continue to be of use, making ourselves valuable in just such an environment?

The advancement of technology will be a key component in the production, which will require the usage of computers and media in conjunction with live performance. Applicable examples of this include a live video feed from remote locations and web-integration.