Brilliant Jerks

I saw the streets, the lights, the cars, the people - Everything moving in different directions at the same time. . . I wanted to make the map alive. In December 2008, an entrepreneur leaves a tech conference in Paris. As he stands on the street, unable to hail a cab, an idea lands with the falling snow: tap a button, get a ride. Ten years later, Mia drives nights in Manchester, Sean is recruited as the brightest new programmer and Tyler moves onto yet another new future. Brilliant Jerks tells the story of three people - a driver, a coder, and a CEO - working for one tech monolith, but living worlds apart. Joseph Charlton's sleek, gripping and revelatory play, based on the creation of a multi-billion-dollar app, premiered at VAULT Festival, 2018, and was revived at Southwark Playhouse, London, in March 2023.

Joseph Charlton is a writer from the north east of England. He worked as a journalist from 2012-2017, primarily at the Independent. His first play, Anniversary, was published in Craig Raine's literary magazine, Arete, in 2017. His second play, Brilliant Jerks, was performed at the Vaults Festival, in London, in 2018. He is now expanding the play into a planned eight part series for the BBC. ANNA X was first performed at the Vaults Festival in 2019. He is currently writing on the second series of HBO and BBC's Industry, as well as working on a novel.