Addressing issues of mental health, body image, and genuine connection in a hyper-connected world, writer and performer Sadie Clark plays a dating app code writer who gives her own algorithms a go when she finds herself unexpectedly single. When she goes from having it all – the job, the flat, the girlfriend – to having it all go tits up just before her 30th birthday, hopeless romantic Brooke throws herself into the science of love: online dating. A bisexual Bridget Jones, a millennial Meg Ryan, Brooke is the lovably hapless heroine for anyone who’s ever felt like they were too much and not enough at the same time. Algorithms is a play about feeling lonely when connecting with others is meant to be easier than ever.
Winner of the Netflix supported Stage to Screen New Voice Award 2020, Algorithms returns to the London stage following an award-winning adaptation into an Audible Original Series. Algorithms was developed on the Soho Theatre Writer’s Lab and longlisted for the Tony Craze Award (2018). It sold out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019, followed by sell-out runs at the Pleasance London and Soho Theatre. The audio adaptation, released in 2022, was shortlisted for the BBC Audio Drama Awards and won a Silver ARIAS for ‘Best Drama’ in 2023.
Writer and performer Sadie Clark said, “I wrote Algorithms in 2018, at a time when I was totally fed up with online dating, and also feeling pretty lonely and isolated as a recently out and newly single bisexual. I decided to write a play with a tongue in cheek rom com feel, from a bisexual perspective, and thus Algorithms was born. After its success at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 and Soho Theatre in 2020, I was commissioned to adapt it into a six-part audio drama for Audible. Bringing Algorithms back to the stage after its success as a podcast is an exciting and daunting prospect! I’m looking forward to revisiting the script, as both the writer and performer. There is so much about it which still feels relevant today, but I have also grown as a writer (and person) since I first wrote it. At its core it is a play about feeling like ‘too much and not enough at the same time’, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to revisit this show for a 2024 audience.”
Algorithms is at Park Theatre 16 April – 11 May
