Written and directed by Stacey Cullen, Overwhelm is Working Progress Collective’s newest project, and opens art the Lambeth Fringe later this month.
Overwhelm explores male loneliness, the dangers of online radicalization, and addiction. It tells the story of three young men at a crossroads, each battling his own demons in a world that demands every bit of his soul.
Where: Bread and Roses Theatre
When: 18-19 Oct
Ticket link: https://lambethfringe.com/events/overwhelm
Stacey tells us more about her play.
What inspired the creation of Overwhelm, and how did it develop into the show you are now presenting?
Overwhelm was woven together through a number of threads that I had been pulling at for quite some time — struggles with my own mental health, a near pathological need to
take care of other people, the epidemic of violence against women, the current political climate as it relates to masculinity, male loneliness, feminism… to name just a few.
A fair bit of inspiration came from my partner, as well — through his childhood experiences, growing up as a lad in the West Midlands.
It would have been simple enough to write something about young women, what we go through, but there was something terribly interesting to me about trying to understand and empathise with this generation’s young men.
It felt like more of a challenge, chiefly because it isn’t based in my own lived experiences, but also because it’s all too easy (and dare I say popular at
the moment) to treat young men with disdain — to paint them as unsympathetic, cold, uncaring, inherently toxic.
But what happens when we start to examine the
circumstances that surround a young man’s descent into so-called “toxicity”?
What happens when we interrogate the societal pressures that push them to the fringes? That’s the egg we’re trying to crack here.
In my head, it was originally a one-man show, centring around Jake, a man in his mid-twenties, who’s been rendered house-bound because of anxiety which has grown into agoraphobia.
He fulfills his need for social contact through message boards and online
communities, where he realises that his circumstances aren’t unique — lots of young men are suffering in similar ways. And some of them are tumbling into an echo chamber of extreme beliefs, as a result.
Many of those elements remain in the show today, but it has obviously expanded quite a lot as well.
We’ve taken to calling it an “enhanced” two-hander. I’ll let audiences come along and figure out what we mean by that!
Why should audiences choose to come to see your show, and what might they
expect?
I’m going to say something that may well seem divisive, but I beg (potential) audience members to hear me out: not only is the male loneliness epidemic a very real thing, but it is an urgent crisis that demands attention. Our hope is that the play spurs that
conversation, both on the night and beyond.
When I began writing Overwhelm, I expressed two major concerns to my partner — the first was a deep desire to ensure that I was doing justice to young men, and particularly
young men from small towns in the Midlands.
The second was worry. Worry that I would be labelled an anti-feminist writer, due to the subject matter I was choosing to
platform.
Please don’t get me wrong. As women, we are still seen as inferior in most spaces. We still have to fight against misogyny daily, both externally and internally.
And I desperately want to use my writing to bring women’s issues to light, to spark conversations about
what women go through, and to create meaningful change for women.
But I also believe
that the societal fates of men and women — and everyone in between — are
inextricably linked. We only rise when we recognise one another’s value as people, not regardless of our gender, but in tandem with it.
The sooner that we start addressing issues of misogyny, women’s rights, trans rights, men’s mental health, and yes, the
male loneliness epidemic, and each of their ties to patriarchal values that keep us divided.
The sooner we can all begin to heal and build a better system that actually serves us all. And in my humble opinion, that work belongs to all of us — women included.
Overwhelm is a play that tries to see all its characters, both onstage and off, as
fundamentally flawed, but doing the best with the tools that they’ve been given.
The main thing that we always hope for as a company is that our shows inspire conversation.
Theatre does its job when the audience leaves asking themselves questions about what they think they know.
We always hope that people come along with a friend so that they can discuss, bounce ideas and thoughts off one another.
We also adore it when audience members stick around for a drink after the show and have a conversation with us.
We want to hear what you loved, but also what you hated! And we mean that sincerely. Honest conversation helps all of us to grow.
Do you find fringe festivals inspiring as a writer or performer?
To quote something that Miles says in the play — without a shadow of a doubt.
All jokes aside, I took my debut solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 and that experience reshaped my life in more ways than I could have possibly imagined. I met
my now partner at the venue I was performing in.
We went on to run Working Progress Collective together, which led to our first professional production in 2024 — Sessions. Sessions went to the Buxton Fringe (winning Best New Writing along the way), as well
as the Edinburgh Fringe.
It also earned us an Associate Artist position at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre, where we had the space and support to begin the development of Overwhelm.
We took the show to Buxton Fringe this summer and won Best New Writing for the second year in a row, also picking up nominations for Best Production
and Excellence in Acting for every member of the cast.
And we’re terribly excited to be dipping our toes into yet another Fringe festival, here in Lambeth. For as much as I adore Edinburgh, smaller Fringe festivals are so overlooked.
The barrier to entry is much lower — especially for working-class artists who lack funding —and the work being cultivated is often of an incredibly high calibre.
Honestly, I wish that
more programmers and mid-size venues would dedicate resources to seeing shows at Fringe festivals like Lambeth, Camden, and Buxton.
It’s inevitable that some of our best and brightest playwrights, directors, and actors are going to languish in the shadows due to lack of access, unless we work hard to change that.
What’s next for the show?
Having taken the show through an extensive development process, as well as three different Fringe festivals, we’re very much hoping that someone will see us at Lambeth
and want to pick us up for a longer run here in London!
With that said, we also recognise the talent that we’re surrounded by and that London is a massively competitive, often oversaturated space. Not only that, but we are
passionate about bringing socially-engaged theatre to under-served communities that have diminished access to theatre.
So we are also exploring the idea of taking Overwhelm on tour next summer, focusing primarily on towns throughout the Midlands
— the very towns that inspired the setting of Overwhelm — culminating in a return to the Edinburgh Fringe.
After two years of placing a lot of our focus on Edinburgh, we decided to take a year away from the delicious, exhausting chaos. We’ve enjoyed the reprieve, but truthfully… we are very excited to (hopefully) be making our return next
year.
We’ve also been chatting about the idea of applying to smaller international festivals, like Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague… because as much as this story is built around
small-town England, we believe that it has a global message.
All in all, let’s just say we’re definitely not done yet!