X

It's a tax write-off. This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.

Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.

To lose all sense of it.

To start seeing things in the dark outside.

Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

Alistair McDowall grew up in the North East of England. Brilliant Adventures was awarded a Bruntwood Prize in 2011, and was developed as part of the Young Writers Festival 2012 at the Royal Court. Other plays include Talk Show (Royal Court), Captain Amazing (Live Theatre) and Pomona (Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama/Orange Tree Richmond). He has been a writer on attachment with the Royal Court, Paines Plough, and the National Theatre Studio (Summer 2013) and was nominated for the Writers Guild Best New Play Award in 2013.