A Professional Victim

What if your first job in London as a refugee poet was getting tortured and murdered every night by immersive horror audiences? A Professional Victim Event scripted reading A Professional Victim follows a young poet and refugee who moves to London and, in order to make a living, takes a job as an actress in an immersive horror experience, where she plays the victim of a serial killer, tortured and murdered by members of the audience every evening. Presented to an audience for the first time in the format of a scripted reading, the play explores the precarious reality of making a living as an artist and the loneliness of emigration, from unstable creative work to the cold, alienating language of bureaucracy. It moves between the absurdity of everyday survival in the world of art and literature, bringing the protagonist into an unexpected dialogue with great figures from the past. As the boundaries between performance and reality begin to blur, the play asks what it means to create, survive and find a voice while living between cultures and worlds. Written and directed by Lisa Minaeva Starring Stefani Elizaveta Burmakova Ogunlesi The scripted reading lasts approximately 1 hour 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A and discussion with the audience. Content warning: This play contains scenes and references involving violence, torture, death, sexual exploitation and nudity, domestic abuse, self-harm, suicide, drug and alcohol use, mental-health crisis, war and displacement, and strong language.