‘The Cleaner’
The Other Palace
August 2023
Directed by Sarah Stacey

Having been developed at Arcola Theatre in 2019, and then Traverse Theatre in 2022, the full script of The Cleaner won the Pitch Your Play Competition, run by the Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass Trust, in August 2023 after a year-long selection process.

This led to a rehearsed reading at The Other Palace in August for an invited industry audience and Masterclass members, alongside the two other winning plays.

Set in the USA in an apocalyptic future not too distant from our own, Violet and Richard are strangers who meet at the worst moment of their lives. She is an anonymous cleaner and he is the most powerful man in the world. And they have one hour inside a locked room to make a decision that will affect the course of history. But as they start to learn more about each other, they realise that neither one of them is in control of the situation – and that they’re being watched by the people who are.

Winner of Theatre Royal Haymarket’s Masterclass Pitch Your Play Competition