‘They say work harder, strive harder. The machine strives for nothing.
The loom does the work twice as fast and half as well.
And they’ll settle for that. They’ll settle for that.’
Machines can make our work easier. They can also make it vanish overnight. Joe Ward Munrow’s play The Legend of Ned Ludd weaves together stories from around the world and takes us on a whirlwind global commute, from the Luddites’ nineteenth-century war against new technology through to London, Liverpool, Lagos and beyond…
But we’re all at the mercy of The Machine. And, in this powerful exploration of work, automation and capitalism, The Machine selects the scenes for each performance, resulting in 256 possible versions of the play, spun from all the stories included in this published edition. It premiered at the Liverpool Everyman in 2024, directed by Jude Christian.
‘Thrillingly audacious… an arresting drama of man, machine and revolution… each scene change is like a magic trick… gradually unfurling profound observations’
— Financial Times
