Beyond Caring zeros in on zero-hours contracts

Alexander Zeldin. Photograph: The Yard Theatre

Alexander Zeldin. Photograph: The Yard Theatre

The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick will take a step into the unknown this month when it presents its first full in-house production, written and directed by the theatre’s new associate artist Alexander Zeldin.

Beyond Caring is about the contemporary social issues surrounding the job market, and the emotional and physical impact of zero-hours contracts. In it, four people employed as cleaners by a temping agency arrive at a meat factory to work the night shift.

“I’m interested in investigating what it feels like now to be in this situation of insecurity, and how millions of lives in this country are brittle, on the edge, insecure,” says Zeldin, who at 29 has already worked across the world as a director and theatre-maker.

The inspiration for the play came in part from the book The Night Cleaner by French journalist Florence Aubenas, who went undercover in northern France to get experience working in low-paid cleaning jobs.
“I just believe that examining this very specific social situation can reveal something more broad about the state of what’s going on now,” says Zeldin.

“And also quite frankly I was just attracted to these characters. I wanted to do something about these people who are invisible and anonymous.”

Zeldin, an Oxford graduate brought up in France, devised the play using his own ensemble of actors. During the process people from outside the world of theatre, from cleaners and temp agency managers to activists and people living in hostels, were invited into the rehearsal space so the actors could glean something about their lives:

“We don’t interview them – we try to create a moment of connection with them that will live with the actor as they continue to build their own character,” says Zeldin.

Zeldin himself went ‘undercover’ while researching the play and tells me about going for an interview at Heathrow for a cleaning job. “It was a 14-day consecutive shift with no promise of further work,” he says. “We were not told when our shifts were, and we were given an induction day that was from 8am – 7pm meaning one of the women, who had children, had to drop out.”

He also did some shift work as a cleaner in a “more posh part of London”. One task took as long to complete with a colleague as was it was meant to take for just one person. “The other day I met 30 cleaners at Unite, and the first question I asked them was: Who’s got experience of being asked to do something and not having enough time to do it in? Everybody said yes. If a job takes three hours but I only pay for two, that can work out at less than the minimum wage.”

Zeldin is keen to stress the play isn’t actually about zero-hours contracts per se (“It’s a moment spent with people in a particular situation,” he insists) and straights bats my question about whether he’s seeking to bring about any change with the play, saying: “I wouldn’t have that pretension.”

It seems daring for The Yard to choose a piece of political theatre for its first full in house production – not that Zeldin would accept that Beyond Caring is overtly that.

“It’s extremely reductive to say something is a political statement,” he says. “If you attempt to have an awareness of what’s going on around you, you cannot avoid being political. The task – and this is going to sound very pretentious – is to try and see and render reality in a very intense way. Inevitably this has a political effect. What I’m trying to do is investigate people not politics.”

Beyond Caring is at The Yard Theatre, Unit 2A, Queen’s Yard, Hackney Wick, E9 5EN until 26 July.