Inside This Purple F**king Pot: The Site-Specific Office Comedy That Makes Your Job Look Totally Normal

Artist Weekly Contributor

By: Jim Manley

If you’ve ever stared at a corporate mission statement and thought, “I’m pretty sure this was written by a committee having a collective breakdown,” then welcome to This Purple F**king Pot—the new site-specific office comedy popping up in a secret Midtown workspace from November 12–23.

A pop-up show staged in a real office (yes, with actual fluorescent lighting and probably the ghost of someone’s overdue Q4 report drifting through the air), the play is a delirious blend of Glengarry Glen Ross, The Office, and that time you considered quitting your job mid-Zoom.

Created by playwright Andrew Moorhead and director Jordan Goodsell—co-founders of GooLay Productions—the piece drops audiences directly into the buzzing war room of On Brand, a fictional agency tasked with marketing a totally meaningless product: a purple cooking pot. A pot that becomes, by the end, myth, monster, muse, and maybe the patron saint of burnout culture.

“We wanted to strip theatre down to its bones,” Moorhead says. “A table, four chairs, and a purple pot. I wanted something that anyone could produce—community theaters, small companies, maybe even a very progressive high school.” That insistence on minimalism unlocked something wild: a comedy that spirals from workplace satire into existential crisis without ever leaving the conference room.

And Moorhead knows this world far too well. “I spent years in marketing,” he admits. “I remember sitting in meetings thinking: Really? This is what I’m dedicating my life to? My energy? My creativity?” Then he laughs. “There’s a monologue in the show about an Ikea couch. That one is basically true.”

Inside This Purple F**king Pot: The Site-Specific Office Comedy That Makes Your Job Look Totally Normal

Photo Courtesy: Zach Willson

The show’s setup is deceptively simple: four brand strategists—Alison, Bobby, Del, and GeGe—must decide what the purple pot stands for. Is it political healing? Bisexual pride? Martha Stewart’s new merch drop? As the clock ticks and the stakes inflate beyond all reason, the office printer threatens to achieve sentience. How very 2025.

But the kicker—what separates This Purple F**king Pot from your run-of-the-mill corporate satire—is the immersive design. The audience doesn’t watch the office. They work there.

“The experience starts the moment you buy a ticket,” Goodsell explains. “You get an onboarding email welcoming you to On Brand—after your application was ‘skimmed for about 30 seconds.’ Then you’re assigned to a team.”

Show up on performance day and you’re buzzed into a real corporate building, handed an employee badge, greeted by a receptionist, and ushered into orientation. If you feel a wave of déjà vu from every HR meeting you’ve ever survived, good. That’s the point.

Goodsell, who trained under the legendary Lonny Price, brings that mentorship’s mix of precision and heart to the chaos. “Lonny taught me that clarity and humanity can coexist,” he says. “Even in a show this absurd, everything has to be emotionally grounded. These characters are fighting to matter in a system that doesn’t care whether they do.”

That grounding pays off. Beneath the jokes (and yes, there is a mama-birding-a-scone moment), the piece asks a deeply modern question: How much of ourselves do we sell to our jobs—and why do we keep showing up?

“Americans are obsessed with our jobs in an unhealthy way,” Moorhead says. “Our jobs give us identity, status, meaning… and health insurance. Of course they dominate our lives.” If he sounds like someone who’s lived the panic, the nausea, the feeling of “I swear this printer is trying to kill me,” it’s because he has.

But don’t get the idea that The Purple Pot is grim. It’s a cathartic, communal laugh—a group exorcism for anyone who’s ever sent a Slack message they instantly regretted. “Modern capitalism is absurd,” Moorhead adds. “If I couldn’t laugh about this shit, I’d cry.”

Goodsell agrees. “New Yorkers are all chasing something—dreams, promotions, validation. I want people leaving this show laughing, but also asking themselves: What am I actually working toward? Is it something I still believe in?”

That combination of comedy and spiritual crisis is exactly what makes the play feel so right-now. It captures the burnout era we’re all living through—post-pandemic, post-Great Resignation, still stuck refreshing LinkedIn like it’s a dating app.

And the pot? The actual purple pot that inspired all this? It’s become a talisman. “We’ve used the same pot since 2023,” Moorhead says. “It lived on my bookshelf holding my birth certificate. Actors walk into auditions and gasp like, ‘Oh wow, it is purple!’ It has an aura.” He laughs. “I’ll never use another one.”

Meanwhile, Goodsell hasn’t bought his own. “It feels sacrilegious,” he says. “I think ours might be the only truly, royally purple pot in existence. Fight me.”

If On Brand—the fictional company at the heart of the play—had an honest motto?

Moorhead doesn’t hesitate: “You’re hired. We’re sorry.”

Goodsell prefers the official slogan, which is somehow more terrifying: “We make brands that ignite America.” Ignite as in inspire? Ignite as in combust? Yes. Exactly.

Ultimately, This Purple F**king Pot is a battle cry disguised as a farce. It reminds us that the workplace is absurd, but the people grinding away inside it? They’re the whole point.

“I hope it inspires empathy,” Moorhead says. “For your coworkers, your employees, even your boss. We’re all stuck in the same rat race. But the people with power? They need to be good f**king people.”

And if you leave wanting to quit your job? “Apply for another one first,” he says. “The job market is crap right now.”