Fast Labour

A powerful play about the growing culture of human exploitation in the UK, delving below the surface to reveal a personal account of life as a migrant worker.

In Ukraine, Victor had a business, a family and a home, but things have changed and he's fled to the UK in search of a better life. Now he's doing everything from gutting fish to picking carrots.

But Victor's a strong-minded man. He's not staying at the bottom of the economic food chain, he's going to build a business of his own and play the gang masters at their own game.

Steve Waters' play Fast Labour was first performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 2008 before transferring to the Hampstead Theatre in London.

Steve Waters is a playwright whose plays include: The Last King of Scotland, adapted from the novel by Giles Foden (Sheffield Theatres, 2019); Limehouse (Donmar Warehouse, 2017); Temple (Donmar Warehouse, 2015); Why Can’t We Live Together? (Menagerie Theatre/Soho/Theatre503, 2013); Europa, as co-author (Birmingham Repertory Theatre/Dresden State Theatre/Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz/Zagreb Youth Theatre, 2013); Ignorance/Jahiliyyah (Hampstead Downstairs, 2012); Little Platoons (Bush Theatre, 2011); The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre, 2009; revived in a new version at Sheffield Theatres, 2022); Fast Labour (Hampstead, in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2008); Out of Your Knowledge (Menagerie Theatre/ Pleasance, Edinburgh/East Anglian tour, 2006-8); World Music (Sheffield Crucible, 2003, and subsequent transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, 2004); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible, 2004); After the Gods (Hampstead Theatre, 2002); and English Journeys (Hampstead Theatre, 1998). His writing for television and radio includes Safe House (BBC4), The Air Gap, The Moderniser (BBC Radio 4), Scribblers and Bretton Woods (BBC Radio 3). He ran the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University between 2006 and 2011, and is now Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia, where he convenes the MA in Creative Writing: Scriptwriting programme. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays, published by Nick Hern Books.