EDINBURGH 2025: Review: IS THERE WORK ON MARS?, Playground 1, ZOO Playground

Dystopian, semi-autobiographical solo show Is There Work On Mars? returns to the Edinburgh Fringe following a successful 2024 run. Multi-disciplinary artist Faye Yan opens the show in a testing lab where she undergoes a series of bleep tests, personality assessments and interview questions in her endeavour to gain employment in the legal team for Nylon Tusk’s SpaceY programme. 

This ‘Martian Worker’s Immigration Exam’ lays bare thinly veiled and outright ableist and racist discrimination from the evaluating machine, a topical commentary on the worrying bias written into AI programming in our real world. The Asian woman undergoing the tests has dyscalculia (a maths learning disability) and ADHD; the machine is convinced based on her answers to her ethnicity tests she should only be offered evaluations in the STEM track, ignoring her strengths, experience and individuality. It’s blackly comic, especially with the juxtaposition Pan (b. Yafei Zheng, Beijing) makes with the ADHD challenges she has faced and how this has led to insecurities about being the ' ‘Asian failure who is just ‘never enough’’ against the expectations of her Chinese culture, the diaspora and stereotypes at large. 

Utilising physical theatre, skillful and sharp digital media, audio integration (Pannavich Weswibul and Charlie Nelson) and audience participation, this is a clever and unique satire that sends up inane corporate culture and shares a thoughtful take on intersectional insecurities and prejudices. 

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