STOCKTAKE

Every day is your first day. Every night is Stocktake.

It’s Stocktake night at The Store, and Teamies Ash, Jess, Fin, and Heidi are just doing their best to complete the tasks, get customers like Karen out on time, and collect their paychecks.

But as the night wears on and the Regional Manager arrives, the Teamies realise that the stock isn’t the heavily discounted women’s fast fashion: it’s their souls.

Stocktake is a comedy horror about what we’re willing to sell to survive.

Cast

Lib Campbell
Lucy X Dunning
Bridget Haberecht
Megan Elizabeth Kennedy
Kate Skinner

Creatives

“One of the most audacious and anarchic plays I’ve seen in some time.”

Faith in Theatres

Writer’s Note

For five years the managers at my retail job told me they supported me pursuing a career in the arts, that they knew this was what I was really passionate about, that they understood I was working this job to get by and make money while trying to make my dreams come true.

Then, when I asked for eight weeks off to take a casual job at a theatre company, my manager asked me if that was really what was best for my career.

So I quit. Partly because she’d just made clear to me that those years of support were just keeping me happy so I would stay there, where they wanted me to stay, but also because for at least a year I’d been so unhappy there I’d been thinking about how much better things would be if a bus hit me on my way to work so I wouldn’t have to go to my job.

I was an assistant manager at this point, specifically the assistant manager who had the privilege of taking all of the customer complaints. In person when a customer had enough of talking to their salesperson or technician and wanted someone with a little more power to yell at, over the phone in response to catty customer service feedback comments, and over email arguing some point about Australian Consumer Law (a subject I wish I knew less about).

I received some of the vilest treatment working there that I have ever encountered in my life. I had my photo taken without my consent, was physically threatened, and yelled at, over stuff. Because at the end of the day that’s all it was: stuff.

It’s nice to be a few years on the other side of that experience and able to write about it with some degree of levity. But the time on the outside has also given me perspective.

Because the customers weren’t really the problem. It was a system that frustrated people to the point of that behaviour.

A system that created the conditions for people to get so angry at customer service workers and instead of improving the conditions (say, by hiring more people, or changing their policies) I was given training on “Handling Difficult Customer Interactions” where steps one through five were all about keeping the customer in the store so they could get more money out of them.

We’re not going to make it out of this one on our own folks. The world is increasingly selfish and cruel; our leaders are prolonging wars so they can avoid accountability for their crimes against humanity, they’re gilding their homes in gold so they can masquerade as kings in a governmental system that is specifically not monarchist, or they’re warning us about the impending apocalypse caused by the very same trillion dollar businesses that they’ve just secured their returns from.

And all the while they’re telling us that we can get through this nightmare by spending our money on their stuff: that if we take care of ourselves and treat everyone else as the supporting characters in our individual survival story that everything will be OK.

I admit I am guilty of thinking I am in this alone. So I am beyond grateful that the process of bringing this show to life has reminded me, deeply, that I am not on my own.

I am grateful to Tasha for showing me that theatre is a contract in community, in working together, in trusting other people to understand the strange idea you’ve been toiling on alone for months and bringing it to life in ways you never dreamed of. I’m grateful to this fucking awesome cast for taking these characters written out of my trauma and making them real and interesting. I am so thankful for the whole team, for jumping into this madcap few months of work with calm and creativity. Thank you to the 25A team for programming this show, and making things possible. Thank you to Belvoir for hosting us. Thank you to mum and dad for feeding me when I couldn’t feed myself.

The terrific irony is that this show was in part funded by the very same job that made it necessary for me to write this show. So I’m also grateful to the past version of me for sticking it through; her perseverance and hard work is now financing my arts career, and I’m slowly paying back the emotional debt she incurred to get me here.

Take care of yourselves, and each other: one team, one dream, one life.

- Jess