Two inmates try to keep from being eaten alive in a morally bankrupt future prison system. Take one part French farce, one part existential angst, add a dash of Machiavellian survival instinct and you have Moxie.

Moxie is a ruthless social satire addressing our cutthroat corporate culture; a dystopian absurdist comedy about the prisons we’re born into, and those we create for ourselves. Jason Patrick Rothery’s script pokes holes in our collective illusion of security. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how often you do the right thing, you still end up as next morning’s breakfast.

Jason Patrick Rothery wrote Moxie as part of a twenty-four hour play festival at the Winnipeg Fringe in 2002. Drawn from frustration at the star-rating system used by media across Canada to review Fringe shows, the play lashes out at a far larger target: the ways in which we assign and perceive value and the importance of any individuals work in our society. Moxie was first produced as a site-specific installation by Upintheair Theatre as a fundraiser for the first Walking Fish. Performed in a dark industrial basement on the outskirts of downtown Vancouver to a packed audience.