Canberra Youth Theatre: quick links
Injury, exploitation and customer abuse
Young people’s experiences of employment in the fast food industry – often, their introduction to professional working life – are rarely positive. Australia’s junior pay rate actively discriminates against young workers, who are paid significantly less than workers aged 21 and over despite doing the same demanding job. Simultaneously, studies show that young people working in the fast food industry face disturbingly high risks of injury, exploitation and customer abuse.
‘The industry is seen as such an everyman job – like, anyone can do it, it’s an unskilled profession. When in reality, not only is it something that requires skill, that requires training and should garner more respect, but it’s something that – when others are looking down on it or not maybe reflecting on or recognising people working in those roles – it can lead to disastrous consequences,’ says Blue Hyslop, a 23-year-old actor in Canberra Youth Theatre’s encore season of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It.
The production – described as a ‘darkly surreal deep-fryer dive’ into the lives of ‘overworked, underpaid, teenage wage-slaves’ in Australia’s fast food industry – was written by Melbourne playwright Honor Webster-Mannison, and was Canberra Youth Theatre’s (CYT) 2022 Emerging Playwright Commission (an annual program supporting the production of new, full-length plays by emerging Australian playwrights). The play premiered in the ACT last year; this week, its encore season opens at Australian Youth Theatre’s (ATYP) Rebel Theatre in Sydney – welcome news for those disheartened by CYT’s announcement late last year that it would not mount a production in 2025.
Honor Webster-Mannison said Work, But This Time Like You Mean It was the culmination of a two-year creative journey informed by the thoughts and experiences of CYT’s emerging artists, conversations with friends about their first jobs, and sociologist and academic Stuart Tannock’s exploration of exploitation in the working lives of young people.
As Webster-Mannison explained in a recent media statement: ‘The junior wage is a stark example of the way society values young people’s labour less than adult labour. And although young workers are more likely to face wage theft and have their legal working conditions violated, they are far less likely to be in a union than workers above the age of 25.’
A $100,000 gift from a Canberra Youth Theatre alumnus
The 2025 Sydney tour of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It has been supported by CYT alumnus Liv Hewson, now best known for their screen work in Hollywood films such as Under My Skin (2020) and For Worse (2025), and the TV program Yellowjackets (ongoing).
Hewson’s first ever touring experience was CYT’s 2013 production Cockroach, which played in both Sydney and Melbourne. In recognition of that formative experience – and in direct response to CYT’s 2025 announcement that the company would have to scale back its operations this year to avoid a major deficit – the actor has personally committed to donating $100,000 over the next five years to the company.
Hewson’s philanthropy is helping to fund the Sydney season of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It and will also help subsidise CYT’s pre-professional training programs for emerging artists, including Young Critics, Writers Ensemble, Open Studio, and acting programs.
‘The experiences and opportunities I had at Canberra Youth Theatre form the baseline of my professional training. Being able to provide some support to the company now, with resources that I’ve accrued through work as an actor, is quite full circle and very important to me,’ Hewson said in a statement provided to ArtsHub.
‘It’s an honour to bolster the kind of programming now that I benefited from in my personal and professional development. Youth arts access and training is important at every level – the social, the creative, the personal and the professional,’ they continued.
‘I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now without … CYT. The young artists there now deserve access to those same opportunities and the resources needed for their development. Youth arts programs are an integral part of the arts culture in their cities, and they’re an integral part of the arts culture in Australia at large. We use the term “emerging artists” a lot – artists emerge from where they’re trained, and they emerge by making art. That training and those opportunities need to be available,’ Hewson said.
Touring and collaboration in the theatre sector
Touring is not new for Canberra Youth Theatre; the company has toured internationally as well as nationally in its 50 years to date. However, the Sydney season of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It is CYT’s first tour since Luke Rogers became Artistic Director in January 2019 – and a valuable and important opportunity for the Canberra company to collaborate with ATYP – Australia’s national youth theatre company.
‘We’re quite lucky that ATYP has had capacity to carve out some space in their beautiful theatre on the harbour, for us to bring a work to not just share with city audiences, but also to amplify what work is being made across the youth arts companies. And also, to be honest, what work is being made in Canberra – Canberra receives a lot of touring shows, but it’s rarer that work that is being created, produced and made in the ACT hits the road. So it’s wonderful to see Canberra as a place where new work is made, not just presented,’ Rogers tells ArtsHub.
He expects to see more collaborations and co-productions in the coming years – and not just in the youth arts sector.
‘I think as we kind of move towards models where we’re all going to be doing more things in partnership and collaboration, it’s good to have these kind of exchange and opportunities for sharing work that is being created in other parts of the country with new audiences,’ Rogers explains.
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‘We can’t keep doing things in isolation, and more and more, even major companies are doing things in partnerships and trying to find co-commissioning partners. And I don’t think the youth arts sector is immune to that, either. It’s not just a challenge, but I think it’s also an opportunity – how can we share the work that we do?’
Canberra Youth Theatre: ‘A wild, chaotic show’
Rogers directed the original Canberra season of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It, and has very much enjoyed getting back into the rehearsal room with the cast, who are all in the early stages of their professional practices – as are some members of the creative team as well. He notes that Work, But This Time Like You Mean It is very much a play for adults in their late teens and early 20s rather than a production made by and for secondary school audiences.
‘We do try to position the work in the exact same way as Sydney audiences might look at the work that’s being done at The Old Fitz or KXT and in some of those independent venues – that’s the space that this work sits in,’ he says.
The production is ‘a wild, chaotic show which amplifies the experience of young people’s first jobs; the pace, the pressure, the amount of strain that a lot of young people are kind of put in, in some of these fast-paced hospitality and fast food environments – and it’s very Aunty Donna, Pythonesque [in tone],’ he adds.
‘Really, it’s looking at how young people – and Honour as an emerging playwright in particular – are exploring absurdism and comedy and surrealism, these kind of genres. How the next generation of artists out there are approaching those forms – it’s fun.’
Actor Blue Hyslop, who is new to this season of the play, agrees with Rogers’ assessment of the production as chaotic. ‘I’ve been saying this all week going into rehearsals, that it’s like – I’m sure I’ve got the words down, but the action and the intention behind everything is just what makes so much of what the play is about. It’s frantic in the best possible way,’ they say.
While Hyslop was watching on from the audience for the premiere season of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It, their fellow actor, 18-year-old Kat Dunkerley – who performed in the play last year – is revelling in the opportunity to revisit the production.
‘To be able to revisit a work is such an honour. Because so often when I do my work, I’m like, “Oh, I wish I had a little bit more time” or “I wish I had a bit more of a break between, like, being able to develop it and being able to perform it”. And now we’ve had a year off. We started rehearsals on the one year anniversary of the closing night, so we’ve had a lot of time to think and to ponder and … to then come back with fresh eyes, but still have that information bank, like, fully set within our brains,’ she tells ArtsHub.
While the play’s movement style remains similar to the original production, ‘and the script has stayed essentially the same, now that we’ve already got the shape to start us off with, we can fully dive deeper into the precision of the work,’ Dunkerly continues.
‘And that has been a really interesting thing to do as an artist, to really hone in on character and intentions for the play. It’s been quite intellectually and creatively challenging, in the best kind of way,’ she concludes.
Canberra Youth Theatre’s production of Work, But This Time Like You Mean It plays ATYP’s Rebel Theatre in Walsh Bay, Sydney from 15-18 October 2025. Learn more about the production.
