Workplace Injuries – 29 May 2025

Workplace Injuries is a set of three one act plays, That Picture of You by Eric Maierson, Bookstore by Grant James Varjas, and Diet Coke for the Dead by Joan Mathieu. Each play could brilliantly stand alone, but together they make up a collection that encapsulates how men in positions of power are anything but safe. The shows explore different age dynamics and different types of relationships, as well as dramatically different stakes depending on one’s line of work. As a series, they remind us that even though there can be a cost to being kind to others, it is the lowest cost.

That Picture of You examines a photography professor, Michael (Sean Patrick Folster) who manipulates his students into agreeing to be the subject of highly sexualized photos and is then upset when the students begin to speak out. In the depths of his despair about cancel culture, he invites over a former student and former fling, Emily (Katie Moore), who uses his own lesson in power and control to take compromising photos of him, which she presumably uses to expose and humiliate him. It’s tough to side with Michael in this one, though Folster does everything in his power to humanize this character. At the end of the day, Michael’s power is largely built on his reputation—people look the other way because he is somewhat of a celebrity. It is incredibly satisfying to watch Emily take him down, but the specificity of their onstage sexual encounter (eg. what Michael does with his belt) is quite haunting. Intimacy coordinator Brooke M. Haney does an incredible job of evoking the disgust and anxiety in the audience that Emily must be feeling going through it. In the end, Michael’s workplace injury is the compromising photos that end his career.

The next thing the audience encounters is Bookstore. Bookstore is a lighter fare. It’s a much lower stakes situation because the store owner, Gray (Chase McCloud), is nice to the customer, Elizabeth (Joan Mathieu). They have an awkward, intergenerational conversation about books and history, which Mathieu makes clear is fraught with lies. Gray notices Elizabeth stealing books along the way, and even takes note of which ones she is stealing. Their banter is hindered by the fact that Gray is a nice person who doesn’t want to confront Elizabeth. As Elizabeth points out, Gray is nosy, and he is ultimately more curious about why Elizabeth is stealing particular books than he is about why she feels the need to steal them. At the end, after Elizabeth exits, Gray pays for the books that she stole so that nothing appears missing from his inventory. In the end, Gray’s workplace injury is just money. He chose to be kind and inquisitive, if a little awkward, and it didn’t cost him more than he wanted to give or anything substantial that would prevent the bookstore from staying in business.

The final piece in this trio is somewhat of an assault on the senses, but in a good way. Diet Coke for the Dead depicts a woman named Moss (Monique Vukovic) who is processing the untimely death of a man she once loved, Nick (Ken Forman), who was a park ranger who died hiking. Though it’s clear that Moss is married to a man named Gus and that for some reason she and Nick did not stay together, Moss spends the night of Nick’s death out in the woods with his corpse remembering what it was like when he was living to pay her last respects, fondly remember the good times, and allow herself to fully feel her loss. It’s a touching performance, with truly wonderful sound design showing the passage of time and the pain of getting too close to familiar moments. We don’t know what caused the rift between Nick and Moss, but given how hostile he is to her presence and how long it takes him to want to be near her, it seems as though the resistance was on his end. Whether intentional or not, Nick’s workplace injury cost him his life, and took some part of Moss with him.

Workplace Injuries highlighted the power of great writing and great acting, and the stories were riveting in their quirky twists and turns. Each piece was very distinct and, taken as a whole Workplace Injuries offers diverse audiences snippets they will absolutely love and opens the mind to the collective possibilities of stories on a similar theme that go a very different way. It was really refreshing to see performances that took worthwhile risks to reach people.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Spin Cycle.