Böcker i Modern Plays-serien

I feel like asking him to stay. To never leave this room. But I know that soon he will leave and...I'm going to ring him that night. I'm not going to write anything down. I might not even say anything. Just listen to him breathe.Lucy and Jim are alone. To the world they seem to be doing alright: they have jobs, friends, ambitions (well, sort of). But inside they are drowning. Until their chance meeting on a London night bus leads to a desperate search for redemption, each through the other. Inevitably, though, their hopes for salvation are dashed as deep-rooted insecurities rise to the surface.City Love is an unflinching look at the opposing human needs for companionship and self-destruction. Sharp observations transform the mundane into the epic in this grim, witty and agonizingly real play that will pierce the heart of anyone who has ever been in love.

I gotta keep hold of my MojoHe keeps me bouncingup and down like a yo-yoWhen I'm on a low lowHe makes me ho hoGets me flying out of black holeslike Chewbacca and Han SoloMelody is in the care system and is out of control . . . the only thing that is constant in Melody's life is her toy monster, Mojo. Blessing has come from Nigeria to stay with an 'Aunty', but when the relationship breaks down, she is trapped in the care system and longs to be back with her Nana in Lagos. Rizla has just left the care system. He has been taken in by some older guys in the local hostel and has found his new 'family'.Melody Loses Her Mojo is a bold, gritty and challenging story aimed at young people. It fuses Hip-hop theatre, dance, puppetry and street art to follow the amazing journeys of three remarkable young people, whose stories intertwine in a world full of magical and surreal moments.

And do you know why I was called by that name? Because I decided who would be saved and who would be condemned. I took that responsibility for others and now I take it for myself. I am Black Jesus. I do not crawl.Zimbabwe. 2015. The Mugabe Government has fallen and investigations into its abuses have begun. Eunice Ncube, working for the new Truth and Justice Commission, begins the interviewing of Gabriel Chibamu, one of the most infamous perpetrators of the horrors of the Mugabe regime. As Gabriel's trial and inevitable prosecution approach, Eunice begins to sift through the past - only to find that right and wrong, and guilt and innocence, are far less clear than she first thought . . . This stunning new play by Finborough Theatre Playwright-in-Residence, and one of the UK's leading political playwrights, Anders Lustgarten, is more urgent than ever. Black Jesus unpicks the political complexities of Zimbabwe through the devastating personal journeys of two very different people, both scarred by one of Africa's most notorious dictatorships.

I wish you could just like consider - consider the chance of it being an accident. 'Cos you're so sure. You're so sure that I did this awful thing. Billy is out waiting for love where she last saw it. Her mum is certain love has walked into her life again. Her sister thinks love could still be found somewhere in the house . . . but Billy herself isn't even allowed through the door. In Katie Hims's sweet, stark family elegy, love never dies, but sometimes - like Billy - it has to sleep in the caravan with Frank's ashes and a bear costume. Billy the Girl is a sharp, yet gentle, look at a fractured family dealing with a lifetime of mistrust.

It's 7:03pm on the front line of the NHS ambulance service.Sylvia is on her last shift. Lisa is on her first shift. The two women patrol the city streets, encountering the full spectrum of human experience. An immersive journey into the world of the paramedic, where the audience sit in the back of a moving ambulance and witness all that comes with a twelve-hour night shift. The Kindness of Strangers is a pan-city promenade piece taking you into the curious day-to-day life of the paramedic.

One works. One looks around. One meets people. But very little communication takes place . . . That is the nature of this little island.As five apparently unrelated characters meet in a seemingly insignificant garden, the autumnal sun shines overhead and everybody waits for rain. What they discuss is superficially anything that can pass the time. What is portrayed is the very essence of England, Englishness, class, unfulfilled ambition, loves lost and homes that no longer exist. Storey's timeless play is a beautiful, compassionate, tragic and darkly funny study of the human mind and a once-great nation coming to terms with its new place in the world.

Sometimes we don't live, we cope. I have coped, not lived, for a long time. So have you I think.A passionate love story set between London and Cyprus. Alexandra, a refugee from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has made a home in London and cocooned herself from ghosts of the past. There, she meets Jonathan, an English classical scholar, who falls deeply in love with her. Against a backdrop of war and the partition of countries, can love overcome the grief of the past?

There will come a point in every witch's life where the scales are tipped so far to one side that the world, nature, humanity - whatever you want to call it - finally fights back. The demons are expelled and we return to the natural state. Sleeping Beauty is the fairytale of the beautiful princess Arabella who pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for a hundred years. Here adapted for the stage, you can join a host of characters for a night of magic, romance and laughter. In this quirky and flamboyant new stage version of the traditional story by Jez Bond and Mark Cameron, the battle of good versus evil is given a facelift, bringing this fairytale vividly to life through comedy, drama and original songs.The songs are included at the back of the edition (melody with chord symbols).

The Christian Humanitarian Reading Initiative for Spiritual Theatre (or C.H.R.I.S.T. for short) are putting on a production of The Nativity Story. It's opening night and nothing is going to plan. Despite a collapsing manger, a deranged donkey, and a director on the brink of hysteria, the show must go on.This hilarious tour-de-force is the second farce from Mischief, creators of the critically acclaimed The Play That Goes Wrong. Once again, we watch as order unravels itself and pandemonium ensues in a piece that will be loved both as a piece to perform and one to watch. The Nativity Goes Wrong received its world premiere at Reading Rep on 22 December.

A dynamic collection of three of Sabrina Mahfouz's pieces for the theatre, published alongside a selection of her poetry.Dry Ice A critically acclaimed solo show about a young stripper, which was produced at by the Underbelly (Edinburgh) and the Bush Theatre (London) and directed by David Schwimmer. It played at the Contact (Manchester), the Soutbank Centre (London) and the Bush (London) as part of Madani Younis's debut season in 2012.One Hour OnlyAn 'upmarket' brothel. It's Forensic Biology student Marley's first night at her new job and AJ - twenty-one, good-looking and intelligent - is her unexpected first client. One Hour Only formed part of the Old Vic New Voices' first ever Edinburgh Season at the Underbelly in association with IdeasTap.CleanZainab, Chloe & Katya, London's best 'clean' criminals and perpetrators of victimless crime, are forced together in an unlikely trio. This feisty trio soon become the unlikely action heroes of an adventure left to men. A short play commissioned by the Traverse Theatre, 2012, Clean was part of the A Play, A Pie & A Pint Season at Òran Mor, Glasgow and The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Danny sleeps rough on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Has done for years. Then one morning he wakes to see a canvas city being erected in front of him. And Danny finds himself swept up in the last occupation of London. Protest Song is a fictional play inspired by real events. Tim Price's funny and savage monologue explores the reality of the Occupy movement.Protest Song received its world premiere in the National Theatre's Shed Theatre on 16 December 2013.This edition features an introduction by the playwright, Tim Price.

We are making little territories in your country, a hostile take-over of your garden sheds, your abandoned houses and your toilets. The occupation has begun!Driven by a desire for belonging, two Romanian immigrants kidnap an Englishman to learn how to be English. Set in a derelict Victorian public toilet, Occupied is a darkly comic play about identity in crisis. The play was first performed at Labfest 2012 and received a full production at Theatre503, London, on 1 April 2014, directed by Anna Mors (winner of the Kevin Spacey Award for Emerging Artists).

Before there is Revolution there must be Revelation.In Lambeth is set against a background of the French and American revolutions. Pursued through the streets of Lambeth by an anti-republican mob, Thomas Paine seeks sanctuary in the garden of William Blake and his wife Catherine only to find them naked up a tree reading Paradise Lost and communing with angels.Originally produced in 1989 and first published the following year, this new edition published to correspond with the revival at the Southwark Playhouse, Lambeth, London in July 2014.

There is one in the Kingdom of England. Who goes by the name of Richard the Lionheart. My waking dreams tell me he will come upon us. He will come to these lands and make pilgrimage, conquest.Saladin's great army have corrected a great wrong by taking Jerusalem back for Islam, after the barbaric slaughter of their people one hundred years ago. But for Muslim and Christian alike Jerusalem is a holy city. Across England and Outremer, nobles answer the call to arms from Richard the Lionheart to march on Jerusalem in the third crusade and retake the Holy City from Saladin.Holy Warriors is a tale of holy war, fraught diplomacy and revenge in the struggle for Jerusalem, taking in over a millennium of bloody conflict, as Richard the Lionheart marches east to face Saladin, and takes Jerusalem.This edition published to coincide with the play's premiere at Shakespeare's Globe, London, on 19 July 2014.

I had a constant battle to get where I am today. Scrimping and scraping, people telling me not to do it, I couldn''t do it. That my life wouldn''t amount to very much. Now I might have had a bit of natural talent but I got here because of pure determination and persistence. Stubbornness you might say. I always went that extra mile, pushed myself that bit harder than anyone else and never took anything for granted.It was 1954 when Beryl Charnock met keen cyclist Charlie Burton. In those days they cycled in clubs and once Beryl started she was smitten, not only with Charlie, but by the thrill and freedom found on two wheels. Beryl was better than good, she was the best, and she was determined to stay that way.Beryl Burton was five times world-pursuit champion, thirteen times national champion, twice road-racing world champion and twelve times national champion. Her accolades include time trials, former world-record holder, former British record-holder, numerous sports awards an MBE and an OBE. Burton was one of the most astonishing sports people ever to have lived, but she remains something of a mystery.Beryl, which celebrates the extraordinary sporting achievements of this inspirational cyclist, has been specially commissioned as an adaptation from Maxine Peake''s acclaimed 2012 Radio 4 play and marks her stage-writing debut. It received its world premiere on 30 June 2014 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the Courtyard Theatre.

Nobody knows us. They think they do. But they don't.In a world of champagne and canapés, the five Colby sisters are the glamorous faces of New York high society. With wealth, style and desirable husbands, they appear to have it all. But privately, the sisters' squabbles distort the picture of this perfect family. Image is everything and struggling to maintain it could have life-changing consequences.This black comedy by OBIE award-winning Canadian playwright Adam Bock received its world premiere at the Tricycle Theatre, London, on 19 June 2014.

Etonians aren't exactly noted for their grey matter, but I've always found them perfectly adjusted to society. Jack, a possible paranoid schizophrenic with a Messiah complex, inherits the title of the 14th Earl of Gurney after his father passes away in a bizarre accident. Singularly unsuited to a life in the upper echelons of elite society, Jack finds himself at the centre of a ruthless power struggle as his scheming family strives to uphold their reputation. Bubbling with acerbic wit and feverish energy, Olivier Award-winning and Oscar-nominated-writer Peter Barnes's razor-sharp satire combines a ferocious mix of hilarity and horror whilst mercilessly exposing the foibles of the English nobility. This edition of the play is published to coincide with the first-ever revival of this classic cult comedy at the Trafalgar Studios, London, on 16 January 2015.

Seasonal new play by London's most prolific and evocative playwright

Written as a vehicle for Coward's own acting talents alongside his frequent stage partner Gertrude Lawrence, Tonight at 8:30 is Coward's ambitious series of ten one-act plays which saw him breathe new life into the one-act form. From vaudeville to satire, from farce to intricate comedy of manners, from melodrama to romance, these plays span the full, glorious range of Coward's writing. Peep through your fingers at the chaotic Red Peppers music-hall show, witness a bankrupt couple use all Ways and Means to scheme their way out of debt, and break your heart along with Laura in the famous Still Life, the original version of the film Brief Encounter. First performed in London in 1936, the plays perfectly showcase Coward's talents as a playwright, providing a sparkling, fast-paced and remarkably varied selection of theatrical gems. Coward wrote of the first series of three plays with characteristic delight: 'They are all brilliantly written, exquisitely directed, and I am bewitching in all of them.' Gertrude Lawrence wrote to Coward in 1947, 'Dearest Noël, wherever I go . . . all I hear is "please revive Tonight at 8.30!"'All ten plays are collected together into this volume that features both Coward's own preface and an introduction by Barry Day, Coward expert and editor of The Letters of Noël Coward.This new edition of Tonight at 8.30 is published to coincide with English Touring Theatre and the Nuffield Southampton's revival for the first time in the UK since Coward starred in them in 1936.

Dad wasn't angry. As I started to cry.He hugged me. He calmed me. And he taught me to lie.Wingman is a new father-son comedy from Fringe-First winner Richard Marsh. Mum's dead. Annoyingly, dad's not. After twenty years apart, can father and son say goodbye to mum without saying hello to each other? This achingly funny story reminds us that no matter how bad life is, family can make it worse. Wingman received its world premiere at the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, on 30 July 2014, directed by Justin Audibert, before transferring to the Soho Theatre Upstairs from 2 - 20 September and then touring.The play is published alongside Richard Marsh's Skittles, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011 and then featured on Radio 4 as Richard Marsh: Love and Sweets, winning Best Scripted Comedy at the BBC Audio Drama Awards.'For verse with heart and verve, see Richard Marsh's dazzling love-gone-wrong show Skittles' Telegraph'Richard Marsh's Skittles came at high velocity, whizzing through the various stages of a romantic entanglement that began when two colleagues shared 'a noncommittal Skittle' during a work break, progressing quickly to proposal and marriage . . . Funny and wise.' Guardian

It's mad that ye're here with me. In Cobh. I always felt like I was born on the brink of the world. That I was near death, always. And here I am! Hereafter. This place of slower motion. But whipping energy. Back Home.A woman lies dead in her grave in the Tumbledown cemetery, Cobh, County Cork. It's a recent relocation; only two weeks before she was living in a flat near Croke Park in Dublin, beneath two East European prostitutes who she had begun to be friendly with.From her last resting place, she tells the story of her life: her happy childhood and the mother who loved Cleopatra; being struck by lightning and then missing school for a year; her night shifts in hotels washing and mending laundry; up to her ultimate and untimely demise in a north Dublin flat; all via a series of unlikely encounters and heartbreaking betrayals.Written in Pat Kinevane's signature style, Underneath is a blackly comic, rich and vivid tale of a life lived in secret, a testament to the people who live on the fringes, under the nose of everyday life.Underneath was published to coincide with the play's first production by Fishamble theatre company in December 2014.

This play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing "Nothing On", a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play a stock of characters and situation

Nothing is stronger than this love, for I am nothing indeed without you, MasterAwoken from his deathbed by his favourite childhood teddy bear, Turing is led by the hand through the journey of his life, from glowing academia to New York drag bars, from triumph to disgrace. Snoo Wilson's Lovesong of the Electric Bear is an epic, psychedelic and electrifying trip through the life of Alan Turing, the computer visionary and maths genius whose gifts made him the code-breaking hero of World War II, but whose homosexuality led him to betrayal and vilification by the very establishment who had depended on him for victory. Lovesong of the Electric Bear is a wonderfully imaginative, comic and moving play from one of British theatre's great voices. The edition publishes to coincide with the European premiere at the Hope Theatre, London, on 24 February 2015.

Let us tell you a strange tale that did unfold someplace in the glum north o'the warld, where there lived a Man who could not stop eating, a Woman doomed to cook his meals and one 'inveesible child'.Told in a rich and saucy Scots dialect with physical verve, a wee dram of whisky to oil the way and a musical score that rolls in like mist over the hills, The Red Chair sees acclaimed Scottish performer Sarah Cameron steer us through a landscape of twisted reason, extreme compulsion and eye-watering complacency, where domestic drudgery happens on an operatic scale and a father's dereliction of duty reaches epic proportions.The Red Chair is based on Sarah's original book that had its first public reading as part of The House of Fairytales at the Port Eliot Festival. It lies somewhere between a Grimm's Tale, an absurdist ghost story and a parent's guide on how not to bring up children.

You see, people forever say history is written by the victors. It's not. It's written by those who can shape the simplest narrative.David is a man struggling to hold together his marriage when the small town he lives in is rocked by the sudden, untimely death of a local girl. As details are uncovered, rumours and talk take hold of the town, and start to force David to revisit old memories.Set in 1960s Ireland, Before Monsters Were Made tells the story of how a few small words can have a very big impact. When suspicion and old stories start to spread like a virus, how well do we know the people we trust the most? Can we ever know what goes on inside other people's lives? And do we really want to?Before Monsters Were Made is an unnerving and moving thriller about loyalty, lies and love.

I think it's sad. A sad place. Full of sad people with fucked-up lives. And I thinks, how? How did they get there? How did they get to this? What was it? What happened that got them there? Cos you're not just born into it, are you. You're not born into being fucked up?Steph is fifteen years old. Simon is her teacher. Both live in Cardiff but their parallel lives couldn't be more different. When an accusation is made and their worlds collide, things aren't as simple as they might seem.Award-winning playwright Katherine Chandler explores truth, class and power in contemporary Wales in this gripping, uncompromising play. It received its world premiere on 20 November 2013 at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, and won the inaugural Wales Drama Award.

Five one-act plays from 1976 by Britain's most popular playwright, Ayckbourn's classic series of plays are presented in a Student Edition with a full introduction, commmentary and questions for study.

Imogene used to be sparkly, vivacious and outgoing. She used to fancy lads, have curves and love chips. Recently however she has become withdrawn, gaunt, obsessed with exercise. The reason? Caol, her new best friend, who''s cast a dark shadow over Imogene''s life.Invisible to everyone except Imogene, Caol will not rest until Imogene has been reduced both emotionally and physically to a shadow of her former self. Combining sharp writing and incredible physicality this piece aims to provoke compassion and debate around the subject of eating disorders, by separating the sufferer from the condition.Overshadowed premiered at the Tiger Dublin Fringe festival in September 2015 where it won the Fishamble New Writing Award. This programme text was published to coincide with revivals at the Project Arts Centre Dublin and Theatre503, London, in January 2016.

A boy. At a bus stop. Easily missed. Liam wanders through the city, repeatedly encountering people, but continually feeling disconnected and alienated. In this vivid and troubled story of an isolated young man, playwright Leo Butler casts a sharp eye over the city and picks someone for us to follow.Boy received its world premiere at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 5 April 2016.

I can still hear them, I hear them in my head all the time. Those songs I sang. But I don't sing them anymore.Alfie keeps hiding Beth's gardening gloves. She's got lots to do and it's just not funny anymore. Why won't he realise that gardening is helping her forget everything? Why can't he see she's still not over her divorce? Why can't he just be nice?Based on a true story of a woman who struck up an unlikely friendship with a wounded crow, As the Crow Flies is a heart-warming story of friendship, healing and kindness from award-winning playwright Hattie Naylor.A funny, moving and timeless story of our endless fascination with birds As the Crow Flies was first produced by Pentabus Theatre Company in March 2017.