LEFT MY DESK, New Play Uses Social Worker's Testimonies To Reframe Perceptions

Lost Watch will return to New Diorama Theatre with the world premiere of Left My Desk - the story of a social worker struggling to stay afloat in one of the most unforgiving professions in the country.

Becca leaves the office at 0856. Uniform is waiting. They speed across the city, blues and twos blaring, on the trail of a missing woman.

It's like a police drama!

Except Becca is a social worker, and they never put social workers in police dramas.

Based on testimonies from social workers and research organisation Frontline, Left My Desk follows Becca - played by Lost Watch co-founder Rianna Dearden - to the brink and back again in a story told with pace, pathos, music, colour and lashings of gallows humour under the direction of Almeida Theatre Resident Director Lucy Wray.

The backdrop for Left My Desk is a Britain where budgets across councils are at breaking point, making the already-difficult job of social work increasingly impossible.

Social Care is needed in every town, city and village across the UK; it's as integral as the police service and as oversubscribed as Accident and Emergency on a Friday night. Demand is high, wages are low, and burnout is common. Left My Desk puts a human face on this political football and gives a rare insight into life in one of the country's harshest professional environments.

Lost Watch have gained a reputation as one of the country's most innovative and challenging companies, with previous productions including Goodstock (2016) which explored genetic predisposition towards breast cancer, and Flew the Coop (2017) which put a darkly comic twist on a real-life Second World War love story which brought to light one of history's great forgotten female heroes.