Soundworlds is delighted to present this reimagining of writer and performer Joana Nastari’s debut play Fuck You Pay Me, which enthralled audiences and smashed stereotypes back in 2019, with its deeply nuanced, furiously political and frequently hilarious exploration of sex work.

We follow phone-addict and secret stripper Holly as she navigates a typical shift at a London strip club: a workplace like any other, with its moments of boredom and frustration, camaraderie and competition, secret crushes on co-workers and tiresome encounters with difficult clients. Yet the mundanity is soon disrupted when an ominous voice message arrives, which forces Holly to confront the shame and stigma which still afflict sex workers across our society.

Playing with the real and imagined intimacies of the strip club and theatre, WORK invites the listener to share Holly’s world in intimate detail, with richly textured ASMR-inspired sound design and a banging favela-funk score by DJ and composer Charlotte Bickley that carries us through the night’s adrenaline-fuelled highs and crushing lows, to the commute home.