Wasted takes place in a London that is rapidly undergoing transformation via urban development. Again, moments in the play that deal with this context point both to the specific period in which it was written, and predict changes that happen after the first performance. In Scene One, for example, Danny invites Ted to a party. Ted, sarcastically guessing what the party will be like, describes a ‘warehouse in Peckham full of wannabe rude boys out to rob phones, and trendy fuckin’ art students passed out in the corner experiencing Ketamine’.⁸ This description draws on tropes of what the sociologist Ruth Glass called ‘gentrification’.⁹ Gentrification describes how formerly working-class neighbourhoods become fashionable, inhabited by artists and students before attracting developers who price out existing residents. Eventually, once working-class neighbourhoods become dominated by the middle classes, as poorer residents are displaced or forced elsewhere (a process that has accelerated in London since the 2012 Olympics, and has been called ‘social cleansing’). The ‘warehouse’ Ted imagines the party taking place in is typical of the kind of trendy, pop-up social venues that began to spring up in areas like Peckham in the run-up to the London Olympics. The term ‘pop-up’ refers to an enterprise such as a café, shop, restaurant, bar or club, that makes temporary, often creative, use of a disused urban building.¹⁰ These venues made Peckham and other districts that had previously been considered run-down (notably Hackney in east London) attractive to investors, who often built properties hoping to lure buyers seduced by the new nightlife and culture. Ted’s animosity towards the ‘warehouse’ venue points to Tempest’s cynicism towards this kind of speculative investment; one that has changed the face of London in the years since Wasted was written. Indeed, this is a theme Tempest has returned to in later works. On the album Let Them Eat Chaos (2016), for example, the song ‘Perfect Coffee’ describes the feeling of being alienated from your home environment in the wake of urban regeneration and investment that has destroyed everything familiar. The writer and performer Arinzé Kene also explores the effects of gentrification in his play Misty (Bush Theatre 2018).¹¹

Despite the very human story at the heart of Wasted, then, it is nonetheless a play that we can read contextually. By mapping significant political, cultural and historical events onto the world of the play we begin to understand how its contents emerge in conversation with the wider world. This allows us a better understanding both of the play itself and of the human impact of the events that contextualize it.

Form and Genre

In Wasted, Tempest juxtaposes two stylistic forms: the chorus and the realistic or ‘naturalistic’ scenes. In doing this, she plays with a number of contemporary and historical literary and performance techniques, including poetry, direct address to the audience, monologues and dramatic scenes with two or three characters.

What we call ‘form’ describes the elements that give shape to a play (or piece of literature or music) and, together with content, places it in a particular genre. The formal juxtapositions of Wasted mean the play sits across a number of genres (or categories), most significantly hip hop, verse drama and realism (or ‘naturalism’), discussed in more detail below. These elements work separately and together to create meaning, and connect the play to different contemporary and historical moments.