I started writing The Algorithm of Us in 2024 for a very simple reason. My colleagues would not go to theatre productions because they didn't feel like they could relate to them. So I made a decision: I am going to write a play about them, and then they'll have to come.
And the more I sat with that idea, the bigger it got. Because the modern workplace — offices, consulting firms, government departments, open plan floors full of people who did not choose each other — is one of the most underexamined arenas in Australian theatre. The dynamics that play out there, the ambitions, the compromises, the quiet erosions of self, deserve to be on stage.
But there was a second reason. In 2024, something was shifting in how we relate to each other at the time I was writing this play. I was living in the UK at the time, and what I witnessed was sobering. That summer, far-right riots erupted across English cities following a tragic stabbing in Southport, with mosques attacked, minority communities targeted, and Nazi salutes in the streets. Figures like Tommy Robinson were mobilising hundreds of thousands of followers online, stoking anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment across cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Rotherham and Belfast. Robinson himself was later sentenced to eighteen months in prison for contempt of court — but the fractures his movement exposed didn't close with his arrest.
People were pulling inward, curating tighter circles, cutting off anyone whose views didn't align with their own. I understood the impulse. I've felt it myself. But I kept coming back to one thought: the workplace is one of the few spaces left where we cannot do that. We cannot choose our colleagues. We cannot curate the room. We have to find a way to be in it together — with people whose values, backgrounds, and choices look nothing like ours. Cutting people off and retreating into echo chambers doesn't build a more cohesive society. It just makes everyone's echo chambers louder.
That tension is at the heart of The Algorithm of Us. Two people. Completely different approaches to surviving the same broken system. Neither of them entirely right. Neither of them entirely wrong.
And then 2026 arrived, and the play became even more urgent.
I was made redundant. So were more people in my network than any year I can remember. Meanwhile, leadership teams everywhere were pushing AI mandates — adopt this tool, embed it in everything, move faster — without the rigour, the process, or the honesty about what it actually meant for the people doing the work. The anxiety in corporate Australia right now is real. The confusion is real. And nobody is making theatre about it.
Two years between writing this play and staging it turns out to have been a gift. Because The Algorithm of Us could not be more timely. It asks questions about AI and labour and progress that we are all navigating in real time. It asks whether we can genuinely care for someone who makes choices we disagree with. It asks what we are willing to sacrifice — and what that sacrifice actually costs us.
It is a satirical romantic comedy set under the fluorescent lights of corporate Australia. It is funny. It is sharp. And it is, I think, one of the most honest pieces of new Australian writing you will see on a Sydney stage this year.
The Algorithm of Us plays at Lane Cove Pottery Lane Performance Space as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2026, 16–19 September. Written by Kersherka Sivakumaran and Mary Jane Estrada. Produced by BCD Theatre on Cammeraygal Country.
Written by Kersherka Sivakumaran · BCD Theatre 2026