My last post made me think about the arbitrariness of reviews and critiques you read wherever you go. Even if you're not going, but reading the Evening Standard on the tube. Can an opera about a musical survive the critical assessment of the harsh ES critics: I say yes. If they write it pre-release. Which is where my ingenious idea comes in: what we need to do is pitch them ideas and concepts, infiltrate their brains before they have seen a single act, show them ridiculous drawings of costumes, props and sets and make them believe it's the greatest show this planet has ever seen - it's called marketing.
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| Chris Bracey via Daniel Poole in Redchurch Street |
Right, now apart from stating the obvious, another week has passed without progress - in any way. I am contemplating my mother's default way out: getting married. Even in times of great despair, lodged between historical chronics and aspiring lawyers in the library, I would not concede to getting hitched. Unless one of the pre-lawyers obliges. Yes, the bleak days of dissertation writing are descending upon me in their dreariest, most boring outfit. Stats of the past two days: cake, two film rentals, no shower, library, youtube. And that is just the prequel. Wait for the methodology chapter - the most futile chapter in every dissertation where you present, not what is interesting or important, but how you got to the bits of information that you can't write about because you need the word count to write about how you found it out. It drives me crazy. I don't even want to find our anything anymore.
What I am doing now is watching The First Knight on BBC, with Richard Gere and Sean Connery, both of whom have appalling British accents. And having one of the quarter-yearly life admin sessions, where I am going through piles of Excel sheets all labelled 'my life', to find that my accountant abandoned me ages ago. Ok, sooooo, back to BBC.
(The protagonist turns to the audience. She is wearing an old t-shirt; in the background we hear some of the dialogue of The First Knight)
I would want to complain at this point, so I do, unless ITV rolls the credits midway through my speech, or Audi drives their latest steel monster into the frame. On the subject of: job seeking. You should know, dear audience, I LOVE to work. In fact I love working so much, I had to capitalise it. The only problem between me and my love for work at the moment are these awful online applications, awkwardly formatted PDF documents and descriptions over descriptions of coffee-mate positions advertised cunningly as 'assistant' or 'junior so and so'. And it's not even the case that I don't like writing an application, because I like writing about myself. It's the writing part that these generic application forms get wrong. They don't want a cover letter where I can express myself in a clear grammar, with illustrations of my working life - no, they want Twitteresque joke-elaborations of no more than 28 1/2 characters about me, my previous jobs, my aspirations and my references. These applications are processed by a computer tracing keywords and eliminating everybody who writes without using those. It reminds me strongly of my old Biology class, where points where gained if certain words appeared in the text of your answer. Needless to say, I nearly failed the class. I am just not very good at using standardised, formulaic prose to express myself about....myself. So, I probably fail to get a job. Despite one and a half degree, some half decent work experience and a serious need for money.
Every time I start one of the online applications now, I feel like crying, because I know that the same questions will litter the way to the final, relieving sentence: 'Thank you for submitting your application. We will be in touch shortly'. Well, who is we? He? Who is that 'we' who tells me time and time again that they will be in touch with me and really, they never are?
(Curtain. No re-entrance of the protagonist. The audience is violently pushed out of the theatre)
Metro: 29th February 2013
Samuel Beckett, the author of 'Online Job Applications' strikes again. The play is a masterpiece on the confusing nature of the digitalised world of the current employment market and its weaknesses. He manages to highlight the unnatural relationship between employment seeker and computer, and the attentive critic spots technological determinism as a recurring motive and background of the play. The jobseeker, played brilliantly by a job seeking unknown, manages to convey real despair and confusion in the tradition of Beckett's plays. One does recognise elements of 'En Attendant Godot' and 'Molloy' in the character, but it is the first time that Beckett focusses on a female lead in search of an unknown, unreachable goal. The confusing nature of the online system, played by an exquisite Bill Nighy, fills the audience with doubts about their own careers, and it is not by any chance that Beckett included into the stage directions the presence of a psychologist and a motivation trainer. We feel that this is not the last we have seen of the anonymous jobseeker; we hope that Beckett will again use this character in a series of plays or novels, and built up on the confusion we experienced in this first encounter with the jobseeker.
It is an honour to see this play.
(Curtain again, a second one. Enter Beckett, in knickerbockers. He remains silent)
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