WORK, BUT THIS TIME LIKE YOU MEAN IT Heads to Sydney’s Rebel Theatre

After a sold-out debut in Canberra, Canberra Youth Theatre will bring Honor Webster-Mannison’s Work, But This Time Like You Mean It to Sydney for a one-week engagement at The Rebel Theatre, Walsh Bay, running October 15–18, 2025.

Directed by Artistic Director Luke Rogers and featuring a cast of eight emerging performers, the surreal comedy plunges audiences into a fried-chicken-fueled time loop of underpaid teenage workers trying to survive another shift. Neon lights, grease-soaked sneakers, and existential chaos collide in this dystopian take on the fast-food grind.

Luke Rogers said, “We’re taking twelve artists to Sydney, many of whom will be touring a show for the first time, with an ambitious new work that challenges expectations for what theatre created by young people can achieve. Everyone remembers their first job… wasting your young life away, one shift at a time, for significantly less than minimum wage. Work, But… is a completely unhinged, chaotic exploration of this universal rite of passage.”

Playwright Honor Webster-Mannison added, “This play is informed by conversations with young people about their first jobs and the realities of exploitation in casual labour. It’s a chaotic and joyously unhinged look at the systems that devalue young workers.”

Winner of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2022 Emerging Playwright Commission, the play is supported by the Australian Theatre for Young People, the ACT Government, and Holding Redlich.

Work, But This Time Like You Mean It

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