Inspired by real-life “Love Clauses” dictating the nature and extent of office relationships, Contractions questions what people might willingly surrender for job security, and how much humanity one can really trade for profitability. This mordant satire is a sharp and near-plausible look at the effects of eroding privacy on Emma, whose personal life comes under increasingly uncomfortable scrutiny.
Bartlett considers his work political, but not on a polemic level. Instead, his work finds theatrical ways to embody the absurdism and ambiguities of contemporary life. In the words of Ben Power, an Associate Director at London’s National Theatre who served as a dramaturg on several of Bartlett’s plays, Bartlett “is interested to an almost unique degree in how you can make political theatre theatrically vibrant.”
Or as Bartlett himself puts it: “Plays, in order to be political, need to strive to get people to think about the systems that are behind our life. And you don’t do that by showing the whole system; you do it by showing the problem and then encouraging the audience to work back themselves. I think it’s far more interesting—and trusts people’s intelligence much more—if you don’t let them know what, as a writer, your perspective is.”
“So you encourage the characters to be absolutely political in what they’re doing and in the way you set it up,” he explains. “You encourage the thoughts about the play to be political. To me, that encourages people to perhaps work towards political change better than just saying ‘Here’s an ideology—that’s what I think.’ Or ‘Here’s an ideology I don’t agree with.’ That doesn’t give any room for anyone to do any thought, and they’ve got to think—that’s got to be what’s going on.”