With the Leeds area inundated with powerhouse performances this month – Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird at the Playhouse and Amadeus at Leeds Grand Theatre, to name but two – it would be easy to have missed a tiny, but equally powerful play that ran for just three nights at the Banham Theatre, at the University of Leeds.
What did you do today … to make you feel like you wasted your time?
The Department of Lost Time, the titular setting for February Hashimshony’s award winning play, is exactly what it says: a government department where people go to evidence the time they have lost, in order to be compensated for it. The show starts before the audience has taken their seats, with a jar outside the theatre, where we are invited to deposit a square of coloured paper on which we have written a way in which we had wasted time today. If you’re interested, mine said, “played games on my phone for over an hour”. I could probably also have said, “watched too many old episodes of Grimm”, or “took a long nap”, but since they’d only asked for one way in which I’d wasted time, I chose the most wasteful one.
Once inside, the Department of Lost Time opens, and clients queue to redeem their lost time. Anyone who has ever used the phrase, “Well, that’s half an hour I’m never getting back”, will be familiar with what this department does. Those twenty minutes you spent looking for the glasses that were exactly where you left them? Here, you can get that time back, or at least, the name of the department would suggest so … except that as people take their tickets and plead their cases, it seems that’s not possible after all.
You waited 22 minutes and 14 seconds for a bus? Wanting that time back seems a reasonable request. Ah, but the bus didn’t come? Then that’s your own time you wasted – next!
Client number two has managed to lose a whole day. She knows the day passed, but she has no recollection of it, so she wants it back. No problem: now provide evidence that you lost it by telling us what you remember from yesterday. You don’t remember anything? Not our problem – next!
The multi-front battle with bureaucracy
I’m vividly reminded that while I’m writing this I’m prevaricating over sending out the next volley in the not one, but two battles I’m currently fighting with companies happily stonewalling me. Last year, an elderly family member slipped on a wet floor inside the bus station at Wakefield, almost doing the splits and fracturing his wrist. Having sent me all around the houses while they claimed it wasn’t their responsibility, the bus company finally acknowledged they did manage that particular bus station, but it was now too late to retrieve any CCTV footage of the incident: and besides, he should have reported the accident at the time. Of course he should. Whilst in shock and in pain, he should have postponed getting treatment for his wrist, or checking that his fall didn’t open the stitches from his recent major operation, and instead, searched for a member of staff to fill out the paperwork..
My own battle is less painful but definitely no easier. I parked my car outside the University of Leeds, between two signs that both clearly stated parking was allowed for two hours, then half an hour later received a parking fine because it turned out there were also yellow lines on the road. Having carefully followed the rules as laid out by the signs, was I supposed to check for additional information that said, “Only kidding, gotcha!”. My argument here is that I would not have parked there had there not been signs saying I could. Their argument is that there were lines saying I couldn’t. I’m using their own tricks against them by paying the fine before starting the battle. They’re currently as confused as I was when I saw the yellow envelope stuck to my car.
How we fear the ominous brown envelope
And speaking of envelopes, anyone who’s ever received that ominous brown one from the DWP knows the heart-pounding anxiety the sight of it lying on the mat beside the front door can produce. The DWP has made an artform out of twisting what you say until your claim is unrecognisable and easily rejected. It’s been 10 years since I last battled them and my heart still jumps into my mouth when a company is thoughtless enough to contact me using that wretched brown stationery..
But, despite all this bureaucratic resistance, the final customer for the Department of Lost Time looks like she might actually succeed. She sits down, produces the jar in which we deposited our slips of coloured paper with the amount of time we wasted today, and tells us:
“I’ve collected every wasted second.
Waiting for buses, standing in queues, scrolling, silences.
I just kept them all. And now I want to spend them. With my sister.
She’s not well. I just need more time with her.”
Facing the truth
She tips the coloured papers over the floor, drawing our attention to how inconsequential and substantial all that wasted time was. It’s an emotional argument that’s difficult to counter with logic, though the department does its best: “The rule book clearly states that time is linear. It goes in one direction.” There it is. The rare truthful argument. There never was a possibility of reclaiming anyone’s lost time. This whole department is just a waste of everyone’s time. As the disillusioned employees leave the department, the janitor comes in and sweeps our lost time off the floor.
The Department Of Lost Time is a powerful play by a student who began their studies in September 2024 and is just now starting their second year. If Hashimshony can produce work of this calibre after just one year, I can’t help wondering who else is out there that needs just a little nudge to stop wasting time and start getting creative.
