Withered Optimism

‘This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.’
Henry David Thoreau

‘That most rare and tragic of natures mistakes. The Average Man.’
The Joker The Killing Joke.
Alan Moore.

Award-nominated Withered Optimism is a tender comic ode to the tyranny of work. The show explores the eroded boundary between work and leisure and interrogates the constant connectivity that has taken its place.

Its put upon protagonist is a hapless millennial dreaming of a simpler life yet stretched to breaking point by the violent centrifuge of the corporate world. When one day the pressure finally gets too much his sanity snaps and he is spun off on a hallucinatory odyssey amongst the flotsam and jetsam of late capitalism.

Combining elements of clown, physical comedy, contemporary dance, visual vernacular and animation Withered Optimism is an arresting visual spectacle about the way we live now. The piece features no language and is deaf accessible.