Written for the Phil Fox Award:

Please briefly explain how your play relates to issues related to addiction. (100 words max)

You think you’ve got the perfect betting system, found the loophole everyone else missed, yet you lose, and that big corporation that wins every time has won again, and you feel silly and embarrassed, but also that you only got it slightly wrong, highly unlikely circumstances came up, and next time you’ll get it right and be on your way to easy money fast, and one day you’ll be just as rich as those sneering bookies. But you won’t, you can’t be, and that’s what you don’t realise each time you place that next bet. Your brain screams at you that the system is designed so you always lose eventually, and far greater minds than yours have been down this route and failed, yet you know something they didn’t. But there are no rational thoughts where gambling is concerned, it’s all based on a feeling, on a rush, a warm glow of superiority deep inside you when a bet comes in…and it always comes in eventually, doesn’t it? That’s what you keep telling yourself and that’s what this play is about.

Note that a one page synopsis for this exists in Google Drive.

 

Sample scenes (click to open in a new tab)

Adam gets a lesson in the pitfalls of gambling from an elderly stranger.

Pushed to the edge, Adam tells his bookmaker exactly what he thinks of him.