The chorus, for example, draws on oral traditions rooted in hip hop culture (see the FORM AND GENRE section of this introduction). It uses the actors’ ‘real’ voices to confront issues of millennial crisis, drawing attention to the hopeless, resigned state of a youth who are worse off than their parents’ generation, and have no means of changing their reality. As the actors narrate towards the end of Chorus One:
Two We realised,
One This is all there is.
Three There really isn’t more.
One Staring down the barrel
Two Of an empty bottle
Three Asking it to give us
All More.1
Earlier generations – for example the hippies of the 1960s, the punks of the 1970s and 1980s, and the Free Party ravers of the 1990s – demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the status quo through identifiable movements, characterized by distinct styles and politics. These youth cultures often expressed counter-cultural ideals and acted directly and with urgency against prevailing social norms. What we see in Wasted, however, is a youth culture mired in a sense of hopelessness, with the characters unable to imagine or facilitate a life outside of the status quo. They are living in a bland, apolitical hedonism (chasing drink, drugs, romantic relationships, travel), and are ultimately trapped by work and the need to work. Interestingly this is even the case for Danny, who doesn’t have a regular job, but is trying to ‘make it’ with his band. In Scene Three, he tells Ted he can’t join Charlotte travelling because he is waiting for his big break (‘we got this gig next week. You know, a big one. Might be some labels there’).2 Although it is suffocating him, the promise of commercial success proves too enticing to ignore.
The lack of an identifiable youth-driven politics in Wasted is perhaps symptomatic of a culture at large that has lost trust in political structures as a result of world events, exacerbated by an increasingly neoliberal environment. The events of 9/11, the resultant War on Terror (particularly the invasion of Iraq), and the 2008 financial crisis have deepened the sense both that politicians do not represent the interests of ordinary people, and that hoping for change is futile. This futility is suggested in the chorus (Chorus Two) as the actors stand on stage and tell the audience:
One Change coming!
Two Change coming!
One I swear we can change something.
Three We change nothing.
Two Change is puffing up its chest.
One Change is jumping to its death.
Three Change is running,
One Short of breath,
Two Change is falling
Three Change is calling on its people
Two Change’s people are not talking
One Nothing changes.3
The repeated refrain ‘change’ in this hip hop style oration evokes the iconic track ‘Changes’, by American rapper Tupac. The academic Chris Richardson details how Tupac’s lyrics might be read as a wail of despair that echoes out from the inner city, calling for help from those with the means to intervene.4 We might read Tempest’s chorus in the same way. Just as subway cars carried messages etched in graffiti from the Bronx into Manhattan,5 the chorus brings the conditions of working-class London to the theatre, a traditionally elite cultural space. Indeed, at the start of the play the chorus draw attention to the fact we are in a theatre, emphasizing the disjuncture between this space and the lives depicted on stage. We might understand Wasted therefore as an attempt to reveal the conditions of those on the margins of society to those at the centre.