alex,oates

How is it delivered? That’s the best bit! Royal Mail. Postman Pat brings your smack to your door with a smile and his black and white cat is none the wiser.

Bruce is nineteen, unemployed and living with his Nan. A struggling young Geordie tech-head, he’s the unlikeliest international criminal mastermind you can imagine. But sucked into an underworld dark web of new-age pirates, local gangsters and tea-cosies, it isn’t long before Bruce discovers how easy it is to buy narcotics online.

Prompted by the arrest in October 2013 of the alleged owner of Silk Road, and the first play ever to be funded by bitcoin, Alex Oates’s play is a biting black comedy about how simple it is not only to buy, but also sell drugs online. Published alongside Rules For Being a Man, a stirring new play that uses silent disco technology to create a vivid soundscape and take the audience into the head of three generations of men as they struggle with mental health issues and contemplate suicide.

Rules For Being a Man depicts the everyday battle of masculinity, whilst these men go about their lives and struggle to hold on.

Three different generations of men come to terms with love, life and other peoples expectations.
Living in a society where the scars of toxic masculinity are becoming more and more visible on the cultural landscape, Rules For Being A Man looks at the marks men create in themselves, and others. Following three generations of a family centred around one pivotal action, this honest new play attempts to try to come to terms with the different pressures men face going through life trying to be a man and the damaging toll they take on their mental health. Inspired by interviews with survivors of suicide and The Samaritans.