Get to know Will O'Mahony

Will O’Mahony, who is no stranger to the Black Swan community, will be switching gears slightly on his next production.

We’ve fallen in love with Will’s ability to find humour, compassion and urgency in the complex array of characters he’s portrayed, but now he brings this and more to his latest full-length play, commissioned and presented by Black Swan.

Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless by Will O’Mahony is a bold new comedy responding to the ever-changing intersections of love, work and belonging in an increasingly automated world.

Are our AI overlords already among us? Is this really the end? We sat down with Will to get an inside scoop on his latest project.

Who is Pete?

I guess he's a well-meaning everyman. He makes mistakes. He tries his guts out. And he seems to get caught up in forces that are beyond him. Sounds a lot like me.

Why is he useless?

Useless is...harsh. But through some fault of his own, he quickly finds himself cut-off from the world that he knew and in ever-increasing damage control.

What can we do if we think we are useless?

I am not a mental health professional, but doing something kind for someone else (or yourself) is never a bad place to start.

What’s your favourite day of the week?

Monday am

What’s your least favourite day of the week?

Monday pm

Can the ordinary Joe, Pete, we, me, be saved from the evercrushing and seemingly random flow of events outside of our control?

Probably not. But do we want to be saved? Doesn't thermodynamics say the universe is always chasing a higher state of entropy? To try and fight that would be swiping at the ocean with a sword. Increasingly I try to live by the mantra, "I don't mind what happens." A bit fatalist maybe, but it does offer a sense of peace, especially in these confused times.

Will, thank you for playing. Can you tell us a little about Pete?

Well, sadly for Pete, the little we know of him is mostly unfortunate: we know he was engaged, that he was left days before his wedding, and that he is in a job that seems a bit soulless. But he's determined to turn his life around and mend his broken heart. We wish him luck...

Can you give a little insight into the process of writing this play?

It started as a series of scenes where a guy just seemed to be haunted by Murphy's Law and that anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I won't be so indulgent as to talk about how that directly relates to my own life (writing a play about it seems indulgent enough), but I think a lot of people understand the idea that "it never rains, it pours." Sure, life can be joyful and precious. But sometimes it can also be absurdly cruel. I challenged myself to write a comedy that captured the unrelenting hardship of what it is to be human. And that sometimes we just can't catch a break. And with the emergence of AI, simply being human has maybe never felt more radical.

A.I is a key jumping off point for this work, how has AI affected your artistic practise? And if not, how do you think it impacted the creative world at large?

I don't think it has affected my artistic practice yet – or at least it hasn't let me know. But for silly life-stuff I've used it with mixed results. It is sick to death of helping me with my golf swing, for instance. And I somehow let it convince me to shave my head. Regarding the creative world at large, AI slop is a thing. I connect with art that has something compellingly imperfect about it, and I want to believe that AI will never truly be able to recreate that. But I'm probably naïve.

What are some of the big questions this work is asking?

Can we ever truly mend a broken heart? Are we going extinct without even knowing it? In an increasingly inorganic world that is always on, what happens to rest and recovery and refuge? Has late-stage capitalism cornered us into a world where we are alienated from each other at the same time as we are living on top of each other?

Art can be chaotic and A.I is meant to bring “order”. Where are you embracing the chaos this year?

Gardening. Cooking. My nieces saying and singing and drawing wild things. I'm also turning forty. Things are getting creaky…

What are you loving at the moment?

Honestly...rugs. Handmade rugs. I have bought over a dozen rugs in the past 12 months for myself and others. No one can explain it, least of all me.

Day (After Day) In The Life Of The Useless by Will O’Mahony is making its world-premiere at the Heath Ledger Theatre next month, showing from 29 August – 20 September.