Böcker i Modern Plays-serien

'I got my first pair of glasses when I was seven.A nurse came to the school and tested everyone's eyes. And so it was discovered why I'd thrown bread to the floating crisp packets in our local pond and walked into lamp posts and said, 'excuse me'. Until that day the world was a swirl of moving coloured blobs. I thought it was the same for everyone.How wrong I was.'Part memoir, part theatre and part standup comedy this delightful story of a myopic seven year old is brought to you by actor, comedian and playwright Sonya Kelly. Sonya tells her story about growing up with poor vision that went undiagnosed until she was seven years old. Combining several forms of theatre, this delightful story shows us how we can better the world even if we cannot see the world.Winner: Scotsman Fringe First Award 2012Critic's Pick, New York Times

"Kazumi is hunting a sea monster. Arriving on a remote Hebridean island, he meets Coblaith, a local woman whose family have lived there for generations. When she offers to help him find the mythical creature that he believes drowned his family, their relationship blossoms. But there's something strange about Cob's obsessive affection for the lochs and something even stranger about the way the other islanders treat her. Suspicious of his new lover, Kazumi's imagination gets the better of him. Could it be that Coblaith is the mythical creature he has been searching for? Or are humans the real monsters after all?"--Page 4 of cover.

Some guys listen to music, some guys like to sing. I like to work people out.Rainer is a solitary delivery rider, moving across London, delivering food to whoever will summon her. From luxury flats to leafy suburbs, she loves to create stories in her head, re-imagining London as one of her favourite sci-fi films or Scorsese's Taxi Driver. She loves her life. Until reality starts to slip and she begins forgetting stuff - even the city she knows so well. And when her one-time lover Jack disappears, when her mum keeps on calling, she has to ask herself: is everything really okay?A one-woman show partly inspired by Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood, Rainer is a celebration of a city and the people within it, seen and unseen. It was a finalist for Samuel French's Off-Broadway Award, longlisted for Theatre Uncut's Political Playwriting Award and winner of the Prix Royal competition in Paris. This edition was published to coincide with the production at the Arcola Theatre, London, in June 2022.

'Do you think I'm a monster?I do sometimes.'There are a few things that we know about Evelyn: we know what she did, we know that we hate her, and we know that she's still out there. Somewhere. She's just not Evelyn anymore. She could be anyone. Even you. Britain is on the hunt, it has been for years. Walton is on high alert . . . and Sandra's just arrived.Inspired by real-life events, Evelyn is a story of mob justice in modern day Britain that interrogates the question: when is justice really served?The edition was published to coincide with the premiere at Colchester's Mercury Theatre and London's Southwark Playhouse in June, 2022.

"After William Shakespeare and John Fletcher."

Think how many others there are like me, hiding in the shadows, operating in the night like foxes, for fear of rejection and a life of ridicule. I've worked too hard to gain my respect only for it to be taken from me because of something I can't control.Foxes follows Daniel, a young Black man trying to keep up with his life, which is moving fast. When his relationship with best friend Leon brings an unexpected change it creates turmoil, bringing a taboo into his family home that has the power to tear the closest and most loving relationships apart.Shortlisted for the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, Dexter Flanders's debut play Foxes explores masculinity and identity within London's Caribbean community and Black street culture.This updated and revised edition was published to coincide with the premiere at London's Seven Dials Playhouse in May 2022.

'...the history of this pub, the possibilities of what once could have happened in this room in which we're now gathered .Well.The possibilities'.Written as a response to the 50th anniversary celebration of the King's Head Theatre, Mark Ravenhill premieres his first new play as Artistic Director.Drawing on the traditions of a classic ghost story, The Haunting of Susan A explores the power of the mind to make the unseen visible and for the cruelty of the past to haunt a room. Described as "a ghost story", the play is Inspired by Ravenhill's love of the work of M.R. James and is set in the King's Head Theatre itself.Published alongside an introduction from Timberlake Wertenbaker, this text also includes Ravenhill's '101 notes on Playwriting', which caused a sensation on Twitter and appears in print for the first time.

The theatre of Howard Barker subverts myth and invents history in its pursuit of the meaning of individual integrity. Repudiating politics and asserting the primacy of the emotions, Barker's tragedy is written in a language by turns poetic and brutally mundane. The effects are disconcerting and destabilizing, as he insists tragedy must be. The twelfth and final collection of plays from this celebrated, influential and widely-studied playwright includes:At Her Age and Hers, which uses Velázquez's painting Las Meninas to meditate on the making of a work of art, removing the figures from the frame, animating them, and assembling them again.Landscape with Cries, which invokes the savagery of the Peasants' Revolt of fourteenth-century France to create an unlikely heroine. Womanly, a play which is alternatively dreamlike and nightmarish in its biography of Elbow, the aptly named protagonist who defies the conventional morals of her day. Four Dialogues which are small in size of cast, but ambitious in their confrontations with the ideas of faith, language, and longing. Struggling to define their needs, the characters come near to the final purpose of Barker's dramatic endeavour - the discovery of a reason to exist.True Condition - both the title of the play and the name of an unseaworthy vessel - which tells of the final voyage of a boat crewed by criminals.

Based on the motion picture Humpday (written & directed in 2009 by Lynn Shelton), Straight is a razor-sharp new comedy from acclaimed writer D. C. Moore about male friendship, sexuality and how the two things can be blurred more easily than one might think . . .Lewis and Waldorf were inseparable at university. Ten years on and a lot has changed. In the middle of a drunken night out, they make a bet that will take their friendship to whole new level. You'll never look at your best friend in the same way again . . .Adapted for the stage by award-winning writer D. C. Moore, author of Town, Honest, Alaska, and The Empire (all published by Methuen Drama) Straight premieres in the Crucible Lyceum Studio, directed by Richard Wilson.

'Eric Argyle was notably surprised when rather unexpectedly his eyes opened again. If truth be told, if he was being honest with himself, he hadn't really expected this type of thing would ever be happening again.'Eric Argyle is having a bad Sunday. It's late. He's still in his pyjamas. A room full of people are staring at him. And he died at 11.42am, two days ago. An issue that people don't seem all that receptive to.Nominated for Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards, Ross Dungan's The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle premiered at the Pleasance Dome in Edinburgh in August 2012 before transferring to Dublin. It debuted in London at the Soho Theatre on 2 April 2013.

During the Apartheid years in South Africa, a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was smuggled around the prison on Robben Island. The book's significance resides in the fact that the book's owner, Sonny Venkatratham, passed it to a number of his fellow political prisoners in the single cells, including Nelson Mandela, asking them to mark their favourite passages with a signature and date. Informally known as "the Robben Island Bible", numerous prisoners selected the speeches that meant the most to them and their experience as political prisoners. In 2008 and 2010, playwright and scholar Matthew Hahn conducted interviews with eight former political prisoners in South Africa. Offering a vivid and startling account of the experience of these political prisoners during Apartheid, this extraordinary verbatim play weaves Shakespeare's words together with first-hand accounts from these men. They offer their reflections on their time as Liberation activists and, twenty years later, on the costs, consequences and whether or not it was all worth it.The play is published alongside a preface by Sonny Venkatrathnam and an introduction by South African actor, director , playwright and cultural activist John Kani.

'You want me to have full penetrative sex with your son, right? I just wanted to, you know, check.'Jack, a young man with a learning disability, lives at home, cared for by his devoted parents. Like most men in their twenties, he has needs - his mates at the rugby club talk about nothing but getting laid, whilst Jack's most erotic experience to date is the time he was winked at by the pretty cashier in Lloyds. Desperate for their son to not feel left out, his parents decide to bring in a professional. But the woman they hire has a far more profound impact on the whole family than they could ever have imagined.Written by up-and-coming writer Sarah Page, this text has been published to coincide with Kuleshov Theatre's 2017 production at Theatre503.

These two plays - by acclaimed playwright Terry Johnson - tell the inspiring, endearing and sometimes alarming stories of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and an aspiring playwright who receives a chance phone call.In Prism we see Legendary cinematic master Jack Cardiff retire to the sleepy village in Buckinghamshire. His days of hard work - and play - on some of the most famous sets in the world are now long behind him, as are his secret liaisons with some of the most famous women in the world... Surrounded by memorabilia from a lifetime of 'painting with light', the writing of an autobiography should be an easy matter - were it not that Jack would now rather live in the past than remember it.Ken, set in 1978, sees an aspiring young playwright wrestle with a play for the Royal Court. The phone rings. The man on the other end is called Ken and he's about to teach our hero the pleasures and perils of serendipity.These plays were published to coincide with a 2017 production of Prism at the Hampstead Theatre, London, by Hampstead Theatre/AKO Foundation initiative and with funding from NEXT DECADE.

A village. A dragon. A damsel in distress.Into the story walks George: wandering knight, freedom fighter, enemy of tyrants the world over. One epic battle later and a nation is born.As the village grows into a town, and the town into a city, the myth of Saint George which once brought a people together, threatens to divide them.

I have to believe in the institutions we trust to be fair, and functional. Whether that be the judiciary, the police, the media . That they should all be able to resist the temptations of a more entertaining lie, over a less extraordinary truth.April 2003. Army Major Charles Ingram, his wife and coughing accomplice are convicted for cheating on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?The evidence is damning. The nation is gripped by the sheer audacity of the plot to snatch the £1,000,000 jackpot. But was he really guilty? It's time for you to decide.Question everything you think you know in James Graham's provocative new play.Olivier Award-nominee James Graham returns with a sharp, fictional imagination of one of the most famous quiz show controversies to date. The production premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre and this edition was published this edition was published to coincide with the West End opening at the Nöel Coward Theatre in April 2018.

Love is the rarest of things...it's the rarest trick...and we feel entitled to it, don't we? Owen may live in the present but his mind remains lodged firmly in the past. As he's forced into a relationship with a teenager with emotional behavioural problems he blurs aspects of his current life with the memories of what might have been and the opportunities and relationships that could have changed his world. Riddled with regret over the man he loved and the chance to flee rural Wales he's unable to detach himself from past mistakes. An exciting new play by an established Welsh writer inspired by experiences working at an emotional behavioral difficulty education unit. All But Gone explores a man's relationship with his past as two world collide and his fractured mind merges the life he once knew with the lonely world in which he exists.

Stevie is 17. She's peak cool, or so she thinks. In the middle of the wide-eyed stagger from girlhood to womanhood Stevie is sent to live in the middle of nowhere with her grandma. Suffolk - the home of doggers, folklore and Stan. Stan is peak geek, not that he knows. There are secrets in the marshland, songs that will show Stevie the way.Interwoven with beautiful live folk music from award-winning band TRILLS. Songlines is a coming-of-age love story in all its awkward teen glory.This edition is published to coincide with the production at the Pleasance Courtyard Beneath, Edinburgh in August 2018 presented by HighTide and DugOut Theatre.

If you're concerned, just talk to a member of our staff or, alternatively, swing your legs over the edge of the bed and walk out, remembering to pull the camera from your bum before leaving the hospital. Liz has got an embarrassing problem, and these yogurts aren't helping. Her body's acting up. Gutted is a bold new journey of frank confessions, colourful characters and too much brown sauce. A shameless tale of love, laughter and lavatories, it is based on solo performer Liz Richardson's real-life experiences as a young woman living with ulcerative colitis (similar to Crohn's Disease).

Forget friendship! This is business.In a scruffy minicab office, Mansha decides it's time to create his own destiny and offers to buy the business from his lifelong friend Raf. As the realities of the state of the company slowly come to light, these two best friends must confront the difficulties of going into business with those closest to them.Set in the north of England, in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher's death, this compelling drama by award-winning playwright Ishy Din lays bare the everyday struggles of a post-industrial generation of British men.

I'm not much now, I know, but I will be. So pick me Jyoti and I swear I will make us the greatest adventure you ever have. On a stormy night in 1954, a woman doomed to marry one of five men discovers the wildcard choice might just be the person she'd been hoping for all along. An Adventure follows headstrong Jyoti and her fumbling suitor Rasik as they ride the crest of the fall of the Empire from the shores of post-Partition India to the forests of Mau Mau Kenya onto the industrial upheaval of 1970s London and the present day.But what happens when youthful ambitions crash hard against reality? When you look back at the story of your time together, can you bear to ask yourself: was it all worth it?Witty, charming and full of fearless historical insight, An Adventure is an epic, technicolour love story from one of the country's most promising young writers about the people who journeyed to British shores in hope and shaped the country we live in today.

Charles Dickens' London is reimagined for the 21st century.Twenty-four hours in the life of a city that has 371 people in every square kilometer, where every street and square shelters heroes and villains, emotional turmoil, violent allegiances, adventures, the remarkable and the everyday.Olivier Award-winning playwright James Graham forges a uniquely crowd-sourced play, incorporating scenes by emerging writers into his own sweeping narrative. Dickens' panoply of London and Londoners, his big characters and fantastic stories in Sketches by Boz are updated for the modern age, incorporating the broadest range of voices from across the community in a theatrical whirligig of wonder and imagination.

Fifteen years of disconnected sparks to do the damage.To stop her beautiful fantastical brain from working.'Fall in love in my early 20s, get married in my late 20s, have at least one child by the time I'm 30. F*ck!'Life is hard to navigate when you've got so many questions. Can I put this jumper in the washing machine? Do you have my birth certificate? Where did you find love? How did you do it? How do you survive? A story of a kamikaze love affair with unexpected consequences. Hilarious and heartbreaking, written by Jessica Butcher and with original music by Anoushka Lucas. Sparks is a two-hander musical about thebrain's response to grief. This edition was published to coincide with the run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2018, ahead of its transfer to the HighTide Festivals 2018 in Aldeburgh, Suffolk and Walthamstow, London.

Simon Stephens' explosive play Rage was written as a counterpoint for Elfriede Jelinek's Wut. Composed as 31 high-energy scenes, each one is based on a series of photos by Joel Goodman which captured the excitement and the mayhem of New Year's Eve 2015/16 in Manchester city centre. Published in the Manchester Evening News the photos quickly went viral in capturing a vital cross-section of a country on the edge. As the clock strikes twelve the celebratory mood turns into violence, racism, marriage proposals and the opening of portals. Enter the madness and get whisked into the hedonism of youth.Rage premiered at the Thalia Theatre, Hamburg in Autumn 2016 and had its UK premiere at the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama in 2018.

Last night I tried not to be shy, just as an experiment for one night - and with catastrophic results.17 year old Callum is proud to be shy and he thinks you should be too, because what this noisy, crazy world needs right now is a bit more self-restraint. The Shy Manifesto is a bittersweet coming-of-age comedy drama about a shy boy who is fed up of constantly being told to come out of his shell. Tonight he is to address an audience of radical shy comrades and incite the meek to finally rise up and inherit the earth. But memories of the previous night's drunken escapades at a classmate's end-of-term party keep intruding, and threaten to upend the fragile identity he has created for himself.Callum delivers his manifesto, exploring adolescence, isolation, self-loathing and sexuality. His irreverent lightness of touch, and multi- rolling as the other characters in his story endear him to the audience, encouraging us that we, too, can be proud to be shy.The Shy Manifesto is a solo piece that takes the experience of being shy as its central subject- something which has rarely been explored in drama, and yet which touches on many audience members lives.

And every so often I find something.Washed up on the shore. Something lost.Something old.Something broken.Something in need of repair. And I'd bring it back here. I'd bring it home.In a house a few miles from the Carmarthenshire coast a mother battles to keep her family together. But when an old acquaintance unexpectedly arrives he awakens her children's need to escape."This one was a great find. It's made of glass look, and amazingly it hadn't smashed when it was lost at sea, even though it's so delicate." A new Welsh play produced by Chippy Lane Productions, a theatre company championing Welsh and Wales-based creatives.

A new adaptation of Strindberg's thrilling psychological drama, newly politically-charged in Amy Ng's adaptation.It's Chinese New Year in 1940s Hong Kong. Julie is the daughter of the island's British Governor. With her father away for the weekend, Julie comes downstairs to join the servants as they party, initiating a sexually-charged power game with her father's butler.What starts as a game descends into a fight for survival as sex, power, money and race collide on a hot night in the Pearl River Delta.This edition was published to coincide with the premiere at Storyhouse, Chester, in February 2020.

From across the room I saw the President, torchlight playing across his visage.And the violins began, and the low rumble of the timpani.I screamed. I ran.An old farmhouse upstate. Snow is falling. Mountains are falling. Something is breaking apart.You are formally invited to dinner with the 45th President of the United States.Anne Washburn (The Twilight Zone, Mr Burns) returns with her sinister and sensational play, now updated in a special dual edition to coincide with its audio premiere on WNYC Public Radio, to be aired in October 2020 in partnership with New York Public Theater.As part of a bold experiment to write a history play about the present, this edition includes both the stage and audio versions of the play, as well as extensive commentary from the writer herself about the significant changes made to it in reaction to the unprecedented crises and protest movements of 2020.

Motherhood. No one can prepare you for it. No matter how much you tell yourself you can do it - can you? Where's the rush of love? When will sleep again?What if the thing you fear most is also the thing you crave? All you wanted was one night of unbroken sleep, what have you done? Mum is a feverish journey through every parent's worst nightmare.A raw and real exploration of early motherhood from the award-winning writer of Emilia, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Theatre Royal, Plymouth and Soho Theatre, London.