HOW NOT TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA to Play Edinburgh Fringe as Part of House of Oz Season
Emily Steel's solo show features one performer playing 28 characters at the Gilded Balloon.
It's 2001. A naive young Australian actor arrives in New York, full of ambition and chasing the dream of 'making it'. Twenty-five years after September 11th changed the world, How Not to Make it in America is a gripping story inspired by playwright Emily Steel's real-life experiences.
This critically acclaimed performance weaves a fragmented, non-linear narrative that is as hilarious as it is devastating. Exploring the personal and psychological impact of a world-changing moment through the eyes of someone who just happened to be there, this is a darkly funny account of survival, ambition and disillusionment. A single performer plays twenty-eight characters, bringing to life a kaleidoscope of personalities, from a hopeful Aussie newcomer to a jaded New York lawyer to a British compulsive liar. It captures the chaos, absurdity and emotional fallout of a life derailed and reshaped.
Steel spent two decades reflecting on her own reaction to September 11th before bringing the events to the stage; from the eerie silence of disconnected phone lines to the lingering smell of Ground Zero, the play captures the sensory and psychological reality of that time. How Not to Make it in America is about how a single moment can ripple through a life in unexpected ways. In the aftermath of September 11th, people around the world made radical life choices and the protagonist Matt dives headfirst into risk, ambition and self-destruction, living as if there might be no tomorrow.
In a world still reckoning with the long-term consequences of 9/11, How Not to Make it in America asks: what does America represent now? And is it still a dream worth chasing?
Writer and associate director Emily Steel comments, I was wearing my then-boyfriend's dressing gown, sitting in the only chair in our not-yet-furnished apartment in Midtown, when he walked back in through the door and said his office had been evacuated because, "Someone's flown a plane into the Twin Towers." I laughed - out of surprise, I think. We had no idea what was happening. We didn't have a TV or a phone. It seems unbelievable now, in a time of smartphones, but we didn't see the videos, we had to buy a paper the next day for the news. I wrote How Not to Make it in America to explore the impact of 9/11 on a young person, far from home, who fails to process the enormity of it. It's fiction but the details are authentic and I hope it feels true.
Commissioned and developed by independent South Australian company Theatre Republic, How Not to Make it in America is part of the House of Oz Edinburgh 2026 season. Performances will run August 6-31.
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