[NoHo Arts District, CA] – Abi Watkinson’s solo show 5:45 makes its premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2025.
5:45 — An Orderly Life. A Messy Truth.
About 5:45
Making its premiere at the 2025 Hollywood Fringe Festival, 5:45 is a razor-sharp one-woman show that delves into the cult of productivity, the unending scramble for control, and the art of falling apart despite trying your best.
Written and performed by British actor and writer Abi Watkinson, 5:45 introduces Maya: an accounts assistant for whom routine is a fully-fledged ideology. Each of her days begins in exactly the same way. Her inbox is always clear. Her boyfriend is conveniently undemanding. She has a system. She has a schedule. She has absolutely no idea what to do when it all goes wrong.
After one unexpected night out unravels her carefully curated existence, Maya finds herself facing a truth she’s spent years trying to outmaneuver: sometimes life doesn’t go to plan. Darkly comic and quietly devastating, 5:45 is a wry and unsentimental exploration of what happens when a person designs their entire life around avoiding the worst-case scenario, only to find themselves in the middle of it.
Artist’s Statement – Abi Watkinson
I’ve always been a task android. Even as a child, I found comfort in ticking boxes. I prided myself on my ability to carry a gargantuan workload on minimal emotional fuel. There’s a praise that comes with being efficient, particularly when you’re a woman: you’re seen as capable, low-maintenance, and quietly impressive. I leaned into that, it was my validatory fuel.
The idea for 5:45 came to me at a moment of absurdity. I was doing a Spanish lesson while working out, simultaneously scrubbing a stain on my sofa, and watching a movie that I ‘had to see’ on double speed. In a moment of clarity, I realised—this might not be the point of ‘living’.
The play started as a joke about why I always ate the same breakfast, but quickly grew teeth. It became a way of asking: what happens when the systems we’ve built to keep us safe end up keeping us numb? In our greedy, achievement-oriented world, I needed to do as much as possible to feel like I was living ‘correctly,’ but that drive for efficiency had completely suppressed any substantial meaning to my work and my sense of self while doing it.
Maya is a character I know intimately. She’s uptight. She’s paranoid. She’s functional, and that’s the problem. 5:45 is, at its heart, about the tension between structure and surrender, external achievement and personal satisfaction—and the slow, awkward, incredibly brave process of learning to let go and live clumsily.
I wrote this play for anyone who’s ever mistaken accolades for success.
About Abi Watkinson
Abi Watkinson is a British actor and writer. A graduate of Theology and Religion at The University of Oxford, Abi worked in London for the globally-renowned agency Rocket Science Industries, where she contributed to projects including Todd Haynes’ May December and Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice. She went on to train in stage and screen performance at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Los Angeles, studying under Anne DeSalvo, Dig Wayne, and MJ Karmi.
On screen, Abi has brought nuance and emotional depth to leading roles in independent films, including Sticky Toffee Pudding and Et in Arcadia Ego. Her upcoming project, Lytle Creek, is currently in post-production.
With roots in theatre, Abi’s stage work encompasses both classical text and devised performance. She has toured nationally across the UK and performed numerous Edinburgh Fringe shows. Notable credits include Aphrodite in the original musical Persephone, for which she received a BroadwayWorld nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest with The Trinity Players. She is a founding member of the L.A.-based comedy troupe, The Kitchen, and has a particular interest in improvised and collaborative theatre.
Alongside her performance career, Abi is a sought-after ghostwriter, founding the service Chronicle & Co., which specialises in writing services for biographical fiction.
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