"You’re not working class. You’re Bulgarian. You weren’t even born in this country."
In Working Class Hero, a white privately-educated Posh Actor frustrated by being pigeonholed decides he wants to do a “gritty” independent film “up North” with “an outrageous accent” and “red hair”. Problem is that script was written by his best friend - a migrant Working Class Actor who wrote it as a vehicle for himself. When Posh Actor gets the job, the conflict ultimately strains their friendship to a breaking point.
A character piece that plays like an action-packed comedy with some absurdist plot twists, Working Class Hero is a satire in which two actors put on some silly wigs (and accents) and aided by sketch comedy, physical theatre, and multimedia performance take us on a high-speed romp through the British class system.
Writer and actor Theo Hristov chats about the piece.
What can you tell me about Working Class Hero?
The play is a class satire in which a white privately-educated actor called POSH ACTOR frustrated
by being pigeonholed decides he wants to do a “gritty” independent film “up North” with “an
outrageous accent” and “red hair” (thank you for the quotes, Emma Corrin.) At the same time his
best friend from drama school, a migrant working class actor and the only person in the play with
an actual name, Stephan, struggles to get a foothold in an industry that doesn’t seem to have a place
for him. Opportunity arises when when Stephan writes something for himself but POSH ACTOR
gets the job and the conflict ultimately strains their friendship to a breaking point.
Oscar Nicholson plays POSH ACTOR and I play Stephan. Throughout the play we put on some
silly wigs (and accents) and make fun of some of the most ridiculous industry conventions we’ve
found in our careers. Oh yes, there’s also a substance that changes your class. And some fencing.
What inspired you to write this piece?
It’s interesting how you go to drama school and you start off with this idea that you can play
anything, you can be anyone. And then you go out on your own and people just want to put you in a
box. And here in the UK that largely means your accent.
I’m a Bulgarian actor. What does that mean? It’s kind of the same as saying I’m from London.
Because any two people from London - no, even from the same London neighbourhood can have
largely different life experiences based on so many different factors. But that’s complicated. It
confuses people.
Hence you get a type. The parts just aren’t there. I’ve done so many self-tapes for these functional,
two-dimensional characters with no inner life. They’re not parts. They’re caricatures. And the worst
thing is, you do it because with 99% of actors being unemployed at any one time, you should be
grateful to be working. Or so they say.
I think this play is my way to direct some of this anger into something positive. Because where are
the Eastern European men who can be sexy and smart and with a sense of humour? And the
women who are not just victims of sex trafficking, or prostitutes, or crony trophy wives? Where are
the protagonists who are more than just their background? Not on your telly and not in the theatre,
that’s for sure.
How did you approach developing the piece?
I started the play at drama school. I was interested in doing something about the performative
function of accents as a marker for social class. I was also getting into satire and sketch comedy at
the time so I thought I can write a class satire from a migrant perspective.
We did two short R&Ds where we just came in with a working draft of a script, tried out ideas and
really saw what didn’t work or just felt like it didn’t belong in the play. This development time really
made it clear to us what the overall story was and how we wanted to approach telling it.
We also did a couple of scratch nights very early on (first one being at the last edition of VOILA!)
where we tested the beginning which has stayed pretty much unchanged. The response to those
scratch nights and the conversations we had after gave us the confidence that there was a story
worth telling. We just needed to figure out what it was. And how to sustain the momentum of those
fifteen minutes for a whole hour.
How did your own experiences shape your research and development?
Assembling a team of migrant theatre-makers who resonated with the themes of the play was
instrumental in making the play what it is. In rehearsals we all brought a lot of our won stories and
experiences which enriched the play and made it so much more specific. What came up pretty early
on was that we wanted to make Stephan as real and relatable as humanly possible while making
everyone around him a type we’ve encountered.
This led us to POSH ACTOR’s arc. We see the same people play the same characters over and over
again and never question it. We wanted to show how posh, usually white, actors fetishise and mine
the perceived traumas of working class people “for their art.” The posh actor in the play co-opts a
‘working class’ identity. Which would be okay if the reverse was just as common. Which it isn’t. It
happens but rarely. And when it comes to migrants, it just doesn’t happen. That’s not our place in
the food chain. We don’t see ourselves represented and that makes us feel invisible. And if we do, it’s
more often than not in a negative light. That makes us look and feel like we’re the enemy. And that
has real consequences in our daily lives. The power of the media to shape our narrative is huge and
we wanted to rewrite that narrative.
How has the piece grown and changed since its scratch debut?
We had a great fifteen minutes which hopefully set the tone for the rest of the play and teach the
audience how to watch it and engage with it. But we lacked a story. We had some themes we wanted
to touch on but it just felt like some of those didn’t belong in this play. If we were doing a satire,
then we should utilise all those satirical tools available to us. So the form really shaped how we
approached the work.
And from there on it was a long process of trial and error. We’d work on something in the room,
have long conversations, I’d make notes and go and rewrite. The version of the play now is almost
unrecognisable to what we started with. And this run and the audiences who come to watch us will
hopefully teach us something new about the play that we can take forward in developing it in the
future.
How have you approached collaborating with director Blanka Szentandrassy?
I have a good ear for dialogue. That’s where I usually start when writing anything. Create a couple
of characters, put them in a specific set of circumstances and just get them talking. Hence the play
initially was very wordy, for the lack of a better word.
What Blanka gave us was a push away from dialogue. And that doesn’t mean you’ll watch us do a
silent movie for an hour. But what it means is we found a physical language we can use to support
the dialogue and action of the play so we don’t have to spell things out for the audience. As a result
there are some beautiful non-verbal moments in the play which tell more than what a page of
dialogue could.
And as a writer I just want other people who are good at what they do to come in and offer ideas
and make this thing that I’ve been thinking about for a very long time their own and just run with it.
What do you hope someone takes away from seeing the show?
I want people to question the assumptions they make on a daily basis about people based on their
accent alone. Very telling at our first scratch at VOILA! last year was a question from an audience
member about why Stephan (at the time called just WORKING CLASS ACTOR) spoke like he did
(in my own accent). If he was working class, shouldn’t he have a working class accent? But what
would that be? Why do we associate certain accents with class belonging? Isn’t that an assumption?
And most of those assumptions are given voice by the images we see in media.
With this play we want to extend the definitions of what labels like ‘working class’ and ‘migrant’
mean and look beyond the often reductive narratives of trauma and struggle that more often than
not characterise those stories.
Where can somebody see the show?
19-22 November, VOILA! Festival @ Barons Court Theatre
5-6 December, Futures Festival @ the Pleasance.
Tickets are available from https://www.voilafestival.co.uk/events/working-class-hero-3/
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