The theatre director is one of the most critical roles in a successful drama company, yet there are no formal qualifications required for entry into this profession. This practical guide for emerging theatre directors answers all the key questions from the very beginning of your career to key stages as you establish your credentials and get professionally recognized. It analyzes the director's role through relationships with the actors, author, designer, production manager and creative teams and provides vital advice for "on-the-job" situations where professional experience is invaluable. The book also provides an overview of the many approaches to acting methodology without focusing on any in particular to allow the director to develop their own unique methods of working with any actor's style.

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, both in the classroom and in the theatre, and this revision brings the Arden 3 edition right up-to-date. A completely new section of the introduction discusses new thinking about Shakespeare's sources for the play and examines his treatment of colonial themes, as well as covering key productions since this edition was first published in 1999. Most importantly it looks at Julie Taymor's ground-breaking 2010 film starring Helen Mirren as "Prospera.". Alden and Virginia Vaughan's edition of The Tempest is much valued for its authority and originality and their revision brings it up-to-date, making it even more relevant and useful to students and theatre practitioners.

A fully modernised, annotated edition of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Ford's controversial tragedy of sibling incest and complex revenge plots. As with all Arden editions, detailed on-page commentary notes help the student understand and appreciate the play both in performance and as a many layered literary text. The lengthy, illustrated introduction offers a wealth of critical and contextual information about the play, and explores its theme of incest from an early modern perspective. Sonia Massai reveals the startling originality of the play, which is far more than a dark rewriting of Romeo and Juliet, and the reasons for its appeal to modern audiences.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights who have risen to prominence since the 1980s. Written by an international team of scholars, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary drama.

Actors' Yearbook is the leading contacts directory for actors finding work in stage, screen and radio. It is the only directory to provide really detailed information on each contact, as well as specific advice on how companies and individuals like to be approached - saving hours of further internet research. From agents and casting directors to producing theatres, showreel companies and photographers, Actors' Yearbook editorially selects only the most relevant (and reputable) contacts for the actor. Articles and commentaries provide a valuable insight into the profession, auditions, interviews and securing work. A useful navigational tool in an industry where actors increasingly need to be more informed and take control of their own careers.

A child's life is snuffed out by a joy-rider. Four years on, the parents and the young lad meet. In this award winning drama, writer Julian Armitstead explores the process of Restorative Justice, by which victim and offender are brought face to face, in a common endeavour to repair the harm caused by crime. Combining powerful naturalism with a strongly expressive thread, the drama unpicks the web of shared emotional devastation wrought on parents and killer alike. The strength of Armitstead's writing lies in his compassionate objectivity: he draws his characters and the dilemmas they face with real clarity, showing their all too human weaknesses, but also the strength of their desire to find a way forward with their lives.

Brecht's parable of good and evil was first performed in 1943 and remains one of his most popular and frequently produced plays worldwide. This unique bilingual edition allows students to compare the original German text with a translation by one of the world's leading playwrights, Tony Kushner. Three gods come to earth hoping to discover one really good person. No one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta.

Lidless is a work of extraordinary intelligence and finely-balanced sensibility. It marries the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy with an all-too-modern setting. It's been fifteen years since Guantánamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter.

Smuggled out of Naples in his youth after stabbing a brutal night-watchman to death, Antonio Barracano returned home in the 1960s as a wealthy man. He used his newfound status to quash his murder conviction, and was soon feared but respected throughout the city. Don Antonio has made it his life's work to bring rough justice to the criminals of Naples who otherwise have no fear of the law. He rules the city's underbelly with a rod of iron. The play begins when a respectable but poor young man who has resolved to murder his father comes to Don Antonio for advice. The Neapolitan Godfather' emerges from the shadows to make the young man's father an offer he can't refuse. The comedy grows blacker as respectable' Naples collides with its criminal underworld. A dark comedy of pathos and farce by one of Italy's pre-eminent dramatists of the twentieth century.

Why has this happened to us? Things like this don't happen to families like ours. Beautiful and privileged, Lucy is enjoying a burgeoning career in television. But her social drug habit has become a serious addiction, casting a dark shadow over her future happiness. As her charmed life begins to slip away Lucy comes to realise that the devoted support of her family does not come without a price.With themes of love, family and addiction, The Knot of the Heart explores the creeping onset of self-destruction beneath a veneer of respectability. Full of David Eldridge's trademark lyricism within everyday family life and interaction, this is a play where emotions are high and relationships are sensitively written. Ultimately hopeful and redemptive, The Knot of the Heart is atmospheric and poetic without undermining the all-too-believable characters' realism.

Left alone in an unfamiliar land, Kate struggles to silence the noises inside her head and begins to question her own sanity. In London, Michael listens carefully to a conversation recorded twenty years ago. Can he hear a third silent person on the tape? In a small Russian town, Irina searches desperately for her missing friend, piecing together fragments from his life. From urban noise to rural emptiness, through rationalism to spirituality, from Russia to the UK, Silence is the latest collaboration between the celebrated theatre company Filter and RSC Associate Director David Farr. Filter create rich stories that awaken the imaginative senses of an audience and they are renowned for a distinctive theatrical style that exposes the workings of a production: video is mixed onstage, sound is produced live by a musician and the performers to create a unique, 'live chemistry' experience for audiences. Silence is a work which combines narrative impetus with astounding, original ideas and theatrical presentation.

Becky Shaw is an amusing and cleverly constructed comedy about ambition, the cost of being truthful, and the perils of a blind date. The fast and funny dialogue navigates between five distinctively perverse and disingenuously dysfunctional characters. The plot is as follows: from the moment that Becky arrives overdressed for her blind date with straight-talking Max, it's clear the evening won't go to plan. In the immediate fallout, Becky becomes an object of devotion for her boss Andrew, who appears to have a fetish for vulnerable women. In turn Andrew's wife Suzanna turns to her step-brother Max for comfort, and their mutual desire begins to resurface. Gina Gionfriddo's masterful play is a biting American comedy with sharp, witty dialogue and a carefully crafted yet unforced story arc. Character-driven, Becky Shaw is a comic tale of tangled love lives and a subtle but acerbic comedy of manners.

The Boy on the Swing is an original and unnerving play which satirises the corporatisation of God. Ingenious and thought-provoking, the play is by turns sinister and surreally funny. With hints of Pinter and Kafka, it portrays an individual in the throes of a corporation with intimidating authority and an almost inexplicable leverage to trap and injure. Upon finding a mysterious business card labelled 'Talk to God' in the street, protagonist Earl Hunt comes into contact with the Hope and Trust Foundation which offers the chance to meet God - for a price. From submitting credit card details during a bafflingly threatening phone interview, Earl proceeds to a visit to the Hope and Trust office full of unfathomable power games which alternate between geniality and intimidating menace. The promised meeting with 'God' arrives when, in a dingy room, Earl finally comes into contact with an old man of 85. From the pseudo business-evangelical spiel of the Hope and Trust Foundation to the frugal simplicity of the man presented as God, Joe Harbot's range and pace is cleverly broad and elusive. From a set-up which subtly suggests the mercenary exploitation of the lost and the lonely, the play's arc turns to darker and stranger themes of metaphysical significance. The Boy on the Swing is an enigmatic piece of writing, sometimes baffling and sometimes blackly funny. For all its bizarre and perplexing notes, the play has a smart, dark sense of humour and grapples with abstract, preternatural questions.

Mongrel Island is a dazzlingly powerful and dreamlike comic play. Marie is losing herself in her grey office existence, trapped by endless piles of paperwork and the same people saying the same things every single day. But as she is forced to work later and later into the night, she discovers a deeply strange twilight world where a new possibility for rescuing her sanity is illuminated by the fluorescent office lights. Commissioned by Soho Theatre and written by up and coming writer Ed Harris, Mongrel Island explores the mind and memory, offering a perspective of how the workplace can strip away our humanity. Combining madcap, surreal humour with an indictment of the corporate world's subjugation of individualism.

King of Scotland is an award-winning, dark comedy and a free adaptation of Gogol's A Diary of a Madman. Long term unemployed Tommy McMillan joins a government funded retraining scheme 'Up The Ladder'. Cited as a shining example of the government's employment policies and chosen for a media profile, Tommy is taken on by The Department of Upward Mobility. The department gets more than they bargained for when they discover just how far up the ladder Tommy is expecting to go.

Into Thy Hands is a play about faith, sex, and the translation of the Bible. Set four hundred years ago, it is centred around John Donne and his parallel roles as the first English translator of Galileo, accomplice in the translation of the Song of Solomon, and as the most popular songwriter of the English Court. Set in 1610-11 at the high watermark of the English Renaissance, the play charts the beginning of an English project that would come to dominate the next three centuries. John Donne stood at the nexus of these developments. At various times politician, soldier, poet, musician, lawyer, courtier, theologian and cleric, and as a man born into one of the most distinguished English Catholic families only to die as one of its most renowned Protestants, he lived lives as most shades of English identity. He was also intimately involved with three great English innovations that came to dominate the subsequent life of the country: the Anglican church, epitomised by the King James Bible (1611); the scientific enlightenment, prompted by the work of Francis Bacon and the appearance of Galileos work in English (also 1611); and the great artistic flourishing in theatre, poetry and music. This play is about the collision of those worlds.

It follows the life of one man during an ordinary day but veers off from the commonplace to become a deliriously comic trip inside his wayward imagination. Dreams and day dreams are brought to life to hilarious effect exposing the faultlines between everyday life and the world of the imagination in which fantasies ignore conventions of taste and political correctness.

In a place where everyone knows your name you can't forget who you are. Life, love and loss in a picture postcard town is laid bare in this heart-breaking but darkly comic new play. Through a series of interweaving accounts For Once cuts to the heart of a family, and a community, turned upside down by unimaginable tragedy. For Once examines the fallout after a car crash on a country lane takes the life of two local teenagers, through three interlaced monologues by their surviving friend Sid and his parents, April and Gordon, exposing the pre-existing faultlines in the family. Sid has been left partially sighted by the crash, and his account of his life before and since the accident gives an insight into why young people living in what seems like 'ideal' communities are driven to seek thrills elsewhere, sometimes with horrifying consequences. However, far from being depressing, Tim Price's skill at capturing the revealing inarticulacy of the teenager, as well as his troubled parents, makes for unexpected humour. For Once is a powerful and incisive look at life and death in a small market town.

London is infected. The dead fall in the streets. As the plague pits fill, the people of London struggle to maintain a society in the face of overwhelming mortality. Based on eye-witness accounts from 1665 and drawing poetic parallels with modern epidemics, Ten Plagues relates one man's journey through a city in crisis. Told entirely through a series of songs, Ten Plagues explores humanity's struggle with sickness and death and celebrates our capacity for survival.

Philip Ridley's play marks a change of direction for the acclaimed, ever restless and maverick writer. Tender Napalm is a high-impact, high-concept two handed play which explores the landscape that is a relationship between a man and a woman. Explosive, poetic, brutal and ultimately redemptive, the play weaves a compelling theatrical tapestry to re-examine and re-define the language of love. This abstract play is cool, slick and savagely romantic. There are no defined settings, narratives or characters. Instead, Tender Napalm is 70 minutes of real time drama: simply a man and woman dissecting their relationship through a mixture of memory, fantasy, and a mixture of the two. And, by doing this, they touch upon zeitgeist concerns of violence, war and faith. Tender Napalm is a showcase of the imaginative, fantastical and magical poeticisms Ridley can achieve from the bleak and brutal themes of war and destruction. This volume also contains five poems from the performance sequence Lovesongs for Extinct Creatures, publishing for the first time extracts from Philip Ridley's cycle of love poetry.

Harper Regan, Punk Rock, Marine Parade and On the Shore of the Wide World

Set on the edges of Heathrow Airport, Wastwater is an elliptical triptych - a snapshot of three different couples who make a choice that will define the fallout of their future. Harry is on the point of leaving England. Frieda knows she will never see him again. Lisa and Mark are on the point of a sexual betrayal that takes them into a place darker than they ever thought possible. Sian has a terrifying deal for Jonathan. She isn't going to take no for an answer.

Somewhere in the city live three elderly, South Asian auntijies who have found themselves together in a refuge for abused women, empty of memories and bereft of their families and friends. Nearby, a new Indian bride has arrived in the country only to find herself in a place that she is utterly unprepared for. The Usual Auntijies is a bitter-sweet new comic-drama that visits the lives of four women as they embark on an inspiring, emotional and comic journey to overcome the past abuse and rediscover their sense of life, love and happiness. Exploring ideas of family and the cultural differences that exist between the East and West, the Auntijies struggle with popular Western culture and provide a hybrid cultural context which amusingly sits alongside the women's otherness and past pain. The Usual Auntijies is a celebration of all women of a particular age whose desires and struggles are too often forgotten.

The play spans twenty years - 1936 to 1956- in the life of the communist Kahn family: SARAH and HARRY, and their children, ADA and RONNIE. Beginning with the anti-fascist demonstrations in 1936 in London's East End and ending with the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the play explores the disintegration of political ideology parallel with the disintegration of a family. It is the son, RONNIE, who is the most deeply affected and turns on his mother who insists on remaining a communist. Her reply ends the play on a note of desperate optimism.

The Accrington Pals is a poignant and harrowing play set in the early years of the First World War, as the country's jingoistic optimism starts to wane and the true terror of warfare gradually becomes clear. The play looks at both the terrifying experiences of the men at the front and the women who were left behind to face social changes, deprivation and the lies of propaganda. While often comic vignettes portray the everyday life of a town denuded of men, the men face the terror that is the Battle of the Somme. This compassionate play portrays the devastating effects of war on a typical Lancashire mill town and the suffering of everyday people.

This book is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of Poliakoff's work for stage and screen and a framework for its critical evaluation. It will prove invaluable to students of theatre, film, and television studies. Robin Nelson locates Poliakoff's distinctive vision and fierce independence as a writer and director in both personal and public histories and against industry contexts. He charts Poliakoff's 'meteoric rise' as a playwright, and his 'second starburst' in television drama since Shooting the Past (1999) which re-affirmed his reputation as a dramatist of distinction.

Theatre in Pieces: politics, poetics and interdisciplinary collaboration is an innovative compilation of seven highly acclaimed productions by key practitioners of non-playwright-driven theatre. Each playtext is reproduced in full and accompanied by extensive notes from members of the original producing theatre. A substantial introduction by Anna Furse provides an overview of the works and contextualises their reading by revealing how a script can emerge from or provoke a collaborative devising process. The works featured include: Hotel Methuselah, Imitating the Dog/Pete Brooks; Don Juan.Who?/Don Juan.Kdo?, Athletes of the Heart; A Girl Skipping, Graeme Miller; Trans-Acts, Julia Bardsley; US, 1966 (with an introduction by Peter Brook); Miss America, Split Britches and 48 Minutes for Palestine

1967. Kenneth and Sandra know the world is changing. And they want some of it. Love, Love, Love takes on the baby boomer generation as it retires, and finds it full of trouble. Smoking, drinking, affectionate and paranoid, one couple journeys forty-years from initial burst to full bloom. The play follows their idealistic teenage years in the 1960s to their stint as a married family unit before finally divorced and, although disintegrated, free from acrimony. Their children, on the other hand, bitterly rail against their parents' irresponsibility and their relaxed, laissez-faire attitude. This play by Olivier award-winning writer Mike Bartlett questions whether the baby boomer generation is to blame for the debt-ridden and adrift generation of their children, now adults but far from stable and settled.

Set in 1916, three young women from the Scottish Women's Hospital are sent to the Russian front to support the war effort. Ailsa is working class and determined to make an impression on her superiors, Millicent is a self-confessed hedonist and Lily is searching for her lost husband. Unprepared for what they witness, each must find a way of coping as they fight to survive an experience that will change them forever. Poetic, visionary and startlingly written, Abigail Docherty's historical play is based on actual diaries of young Scottish nurses who experienced the Great War. Often darkly funny and raw in its emotions, Sea and Land and Sky is a gripping and sensual tale of youth, war, memory - and the power of love. Sea and Land and Sky is boldly inventive, blackly comic, and starkly savage.

Ellida, the Lighthouse Keeper's daughter, is homesick for the sea. Her life with her husband Dr Wangel and his daughters leaves her restless. Then, on a hot, brilliantly clear summer morning life changes. . .Ellida Wangel's mysterious seafaring lover has returned after many years to reclaim the woman to whom he believed himself to be betrothed. With piercing eyes he exerts a mesmerising hold over all whom he encounters. Yet, he is a man with a past, a murderer, a man of the sea. What is Ellida to do? Whom should she choose? The husband who loves her and is prepared to grant her freedom or the enigmatic man with whom she shares the same watery affinity. A man who holds a 'horrible unfathomable power' over her mind. Yet Ellida's mind is like the sea, it ebbs and flows and finally reaches its own firm conclusion. The Lady from the Sea (1888) represents an important turning point in Ibsen's work. Within a few days of its publication Edmund Gosse wrote 'There is thrown over the whole play a glamour of romance, of mystery, of landscape beauty. . .moreover, after so many tragedies, this is a comedy. . .the tone is quite unusually sunny, and without a tinge of pessimism.' This play explores the hypnotic hold one person may gain over another. It is an emphatic defence of individuality, of inner struggles faced with courage and integrity.

All the money went and there was nothing to buy food with. So Mothers and Fathers tried to find things they could get rid of, things that ate, things that drank or things that needed to be kept warm. The dogs went first'. In a recession-ravaged city, what do you do when the money runs out? Based on the extraordinary true story of Ivan Mishukov, Ivan and the Dogs is a spellbinding story of survival, conjuring the streets of Moscow in the 1990s through the eyes of a child.

Crash is a contemporary, satirical comedy, probing the feelings behind and reaction to the economic crisis and the people who caused it. The play follows a reunion of sorts, but on the basis of the characters' current situations, their common ground is at best elusive. Nick is a Securities Trader for Goldman Sachs and collector of art. Humphrey is an artist with ethics and a cheque he's not sure he should cash. And Christine is the beautiful girl they both loved, but Humphrey married. All together again, in Nick's Elizabethan mansion, getting ready to celebrate the unveiling of a new sculpture. But under the surface Humphrey is angry. Angry in the same way that the whole world is angry, angry about how people like Nick seem to have got away with causing a financial meltdown that affected everyone, but still manage to bank their bonuses.

Onassis portrays the last years of the life of the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who after a notorious affair with Maria Callas, married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968. A millionaire at 25, he had become one of the world's richest men, but it was the glamour of the women in his life which brought him real fame, causing him to pursue personal vendettas and amassing empires on an international scale. Based in part on Peter Evans' book Nemesis, Onassis is an explosive account of one man's voracious appetite for sex, money and power. The play depicts Onassis' complex interwoven relationships with women and his family, as well as his long-running feud with the Kennedy family and the American establishment. With hints of Greek tragedy and hubris, it explores how those with great wealth and political influence live their lives detached from the moral code and realities of ordinary mortals.

Mrs C wants a baby not a Christmas tree. B wants a real hairdresser's scissors and a wife. D wants a snow globe and 'a big head of dirty auld curls'. All of them want their own place in the world. And if they can't find it, they'll create one of their own. The play follows B and D in the care home where they are residents, and where Mrs C is a carer, on their special - 'very fecking special' - journey towards happiness. B for Baby is a tender, sharp-witted new play set in a residential care home for people with severe learning disabilities. Treating this taboo subject with humanity and humour, the piece's acuity and generously compassionate portraits result in a moving, if at times uncomfortable, drama. Poignantly exploring forbidden topics, B for Baby invites the reader or audience to rediscover the power and joy of make-believe.

Mike Bartletts new play is an imaginative investigation into the perils we currently face. Environmental disaster, economic meltdown and moral bankruptcy threaten to overwhelm a disperate group of individuals, united only in their growing sense of panic and of isolation. With wit, imagination and humanity, Bartlett investigates the potential for change and the possibility of hope.
- British Theatre Guide

Michael Frayn is one of the great playwrights of our time, enjoying international acclaim and prestige. This anthology contains three of his strongest titles of serious drama: Copenhagen, Democracy and Afterlife. The volume features the definitive version of each play together with an introduction by the author and a chronology of his work.

A sudden shock and a man's life flashes before his eyes. He experiences an intense rush of extraordinary images and tangled memories, revelations and lost connections. People, time and places swirl around him. As he valiantly attempts to stitch it all back together, will his luck hold out?

"This is my first tax return. Thank you. . .erm for offering to. . . for helping. I realise it's a bit weird. It's just. This is. . .it's the only way I can think to make it better. The only way I can think to do it. With other people. Like this." Award-winning Playwright-in-Residence James Graham reunites with former Finborough Theatre Associate Director Kate Wasserberg to present a blackly comic and uniquely interactive storytelling event - a different actor, telling a story in a different order, selected at random, every single night. Tax is really, really taxing for Ben Edwards. Self Employed. And afraid. . .And now he must face his dreaded self assessment form, with every receipt evoking the good times and the bad - memories of things gone wrong, gone right, the journeys he's been on, the relationships that have begun and ended and the people he has lost. . .With each receipt drawn out at random, Ben begins to stitch together the patchwork quilt that was the Tax Year 2009/2010 - a year that was both hilarious and tragic, all mixed up in one shoe box of receipts.

On John's return to Northampton from the bright lights of London, he finds his hometown is exactly the same as when he left it - from the rooms at his parent's house, to the Saturday nights on Abington Street. In fact, the only thing that seems to have changed. . . is John. Slipping back into his old habits, old jobs and old relationships, John considers the reasons why his urge to come back took him on a sixty mile walk North, from the anonymity of corporate city life, to the comfort of home.

Right, you know the rules, watch the low blows, if its a knock down, no messing about, go straight to your corner, and dont come out till called for, are we clear? Touch gloves, lets go. In the red corner: Leon Davidson  Black British champ or Uncle Tom? In the blue corner: Troy Augustus  American powerhouse or naïve cash cow? Two former friends step into the ring and face up to who they are. Sucker Punch looks back on what it was like to be young and Black in the 80s and asks if the right battles have been fought, let alone won.

On a farm in the North East of England a family gathers. Five brothers and four generations feature in an epic play about hope, love, fear and the very end of time. A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky is a refreshingly subtle and compassionate vision of the world on the edge of apocalypse. Within a cosmological context, the focus is on a single family, their relations with each other and their unreconciled regrets, soon to become permanent. With an ensemble of strong, engaging characters, there are knotty, realistic family dynamics and a palimpsest of recent family history. The characters and dialogue are naturalistic but the serious themes are elucidated and alleviated with humour and quirky, surreal touches. The play represents a unique collboration between three of the UK's pre-eminent stage writers. The ambition of the partnership is matched by the ambition of the play's sweeping scope. Whilst the three voices collide, they also ring out individually without sacrificing the piece's coherent wholeness, and the play represents a rare, fascinating study in stage collaboration.

"I've always said I'll stop just as soon as The X Factor stops. The X Factor stops I stop that's the deal." It's Saturday night and the judges are gathering for their prime-time slot, feeding the nation their weekly fix. Except the harshest critics are sitting on your sofa and the mute button doesn't seem to work. Frank, a recovering drug addict, Katie, his long-suffering wife and Rosanna, their next-door neighbour and X Factor addict, gather for tv and dinner on a Saturday night. The evening begins with football and banter but it soon descends into arguments and revelations. While Frank is a newly recovered addict battling with both his recovery and the suspicions of others, Rosanna festers in resentment against her husband who prioritised cocaine over family, Deanne is an alcoholic, and Katie is simply addicted to addicts themselves. Written by Nick Grosso, the author of hit plays including Kosher Harry and Real Classy Affair, this character-driven play is full of piercing, dark humour and veils uncompromising truths behind quick fire banter. Portraying the devastating effects of addiction on lives and relationships, the characters must try to cope and carry on in the face of addictive lures. Ingredient X is a tough, abrasive new comedy exploring the dynamics of different types of addiction in modern life, from The X Factor

In 1960's Liverpool two lovers hide in the closet, then go their separate ways. While pits close and dole queues grow, a couple of runaways find Heaven in 1980's London. And today the paparazzi chase a love story that could tear a family apart. Then a grieving mother gets lost up a mountain, with a vicar...A deeply moving, funny, unflinching, and often magical story about love, honesty and being brave enough to sing out at the top of your voice. With style.

'You see, what this country needs is a strong government to sort out the laws, bring order" Election night 1979: the sus laws made it legal for police to stop and search anyone - purely on suspicion. Two detectives on the graveyard shift in an East London police station place bets on which party will win. A black man is picked up, accused of his wife's murder. He is incensed, believing that he'll be fodder for an incoming government keen to flex its law-and-order muscles.

This Student Edition of All My Sons is perfect for students of literature and drama and offers an unrivalled guide to Miller's play. It features an extensive introduction by Toby Zinman which includes: a chronology of Miller's life and times; a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the definitive edition of the play.

This Student Edition of The Crucible is perfect for students of literature and drama and offers an unrivalled guide to Miller's classic play. It features an extensive introduction by Susan C. W. Abbotson which includes: a chronology of Miller's life and times; a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study, detailed notes on words and phrases from the text and the additional scene 2 of the second Act, this is the definitive edition of the play.

Death of a Salesman is Miller's tragic masterpiece and one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, the play remains a classic work of literature and drama that is studied and performed around the world. This critical edition offers a wealth of authoritative and helpful commentary by one of the leading international Miller scholars. Prepared in consultation with the author's estate, it is the definitive edition of the work.

This Student Edition of A View from the Bridge is perfect for students of literature and drama and offers an unrivalled guide to Miller's play. It features an extensive introduction by Steve Marino which includes: a chronology of Miller's life and times; a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the definitive edition of the play.

"I've listened to all the stories of my generation, then watched 'em get sick or fade away. And it wasn't this world that killed 'em. It was the other& the memory of it." Britain, the near future. Much of the country is underwater and the government has been reduced to a group of fascist strongmen. In a rural outpost of the state, the men patrol the moors for illegals whilst the women run a self-sufficient farm to provide what all they need to survive. The living conditions are harsh, every meagre ration is grown from scratch and they must battle with inclement weather and a draconian government. As their numbers dwindle, they struggle to retain a semblance of civilisation in the face of the inevitable onset of global war. Stark and imperative, but shot through with a sense of warm compassion, Beth Steel's debut play Ditch is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, and a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours. Ditch is a brutal and uncompromising play, with a grounded, earthy sense of humanity. The result is both heart-rending and chilling, depicting a convincing, bleak vision of the future.

Polar Bears is a captivating tale by award-winning writer Mark Haddon. Balancing humour and pathos, it tells of one man's struggle to love, support and live with someone suffering from a psychological condition. With an elliptical structure and teasing timeline, the play handles the subject sensitively, with vivid, sympathetically-drawn characters and nicely-balanced dialectics. Polar Bears is thought-provoking and intelligent, with echoes of Nietszchean philosophy, and it refuses to offer any easy answers for those embroiled in mental instability. The plot is as follows: John has never met anyone like Kay. When the moon is in the right phase, she is magnetic and amazingly alive. But when the darkness closes in, she is lost to another world, a world in which John does not belong.

"Patch you up, all nice like, splint, bandage your leg. All very civilized actually. But then. Then. We hand you over." Helmand in the height of summer. Gary, a British soldier, and Hafizullah, his Afghan colleague, guard an injured young prisoner, Zia, found in the heat of battle. Gary wants answers, Hafizullah just wants to make it through the day and Zia thinks there has been a big mistake. Surrounded by intense heat and violence, the characters' moral codes are tested to the limit. DC Moore's second play dissects the politics of occupation, home and abroad. With both painful and witty insight, he explores some of the lengths humanity is stretched to under the circumstances of war. The strong characterisation enjoys a healthy dose of humanity and the politically-charged subject is handled with subtlety and atypical nuances. The Empire is an amusing and sometime shocking insight into life in the Afghanistan war.

Curtis could be the next big thing in politics, but he's being tormented by sightings of his dead brother. To try and exorcise his demons a séance is held in the very same flat Curtis and his brother grew up in all those years ago. All would have gone to plan were it not for Link and his mysterious friend Zak squatting in Curtis' hallowed ground. It soon transpires that these unexpected and unwanted guests could provide answers to Curtis' torment and the link between him and his dead brother he's been pining for.
- Simon Sladen, British Theatre Guide

"Here's to Col's numpty maw and paw for leaving him home alone and expecting everything to stay the way it was. Suckas!" When you're only sixteen, could the events of one night really shape the course of your life? Divert you from becoming the man you might have become, stunt you, burden you, trap you, destroy you, change the very core of you? Leave you empty.

A Day at the Racists is a devastatingly timely examination of the rise of the BNP in London. Pete Case used to be something - a leading Labour Party organiser in the local car factories. Now he struggles to get by as a decorator as immigrant workers undercut his best mate's firm, his son Mark can't get a job or onto the housing list and nobody, from his Labour MP to his granddaughter's teacher, seems to care. Then Pete finds unexpected hope: Gina is young, mixed race and standing for Parliament on a platform of helping the local community. She is standing for the British National Party. As Pete's rage and despair gradually overcome his longstanding loathing of the BNP, he is drawn into the world of Gina's campaign and finds himself entangled in a nightmare of political machinations that pit his closest relationships - son, best mate, lover - against his longest-held beliefs and newfound aims. Set in the very Barking constituency that BNP leader Nick Griffin is to stand for in the forthcoming General Election, A Day at the Racists is a uniquely brave and perceptive piece of political theatre that both attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction - the political abandonment and betrayal of the working class by New Labour.

In Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl reimagines the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, ingenious plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story.

David, Kojo and Sharon grew up on a London estate. Now in their mid 20s, theyre eyeing another kind of life. But how do you choose the right path when temptation lies around every corner? If your emotional or financial debt is sky high, how do you buy your way out?

The Whisky Taster is a contemporary, subtle and witty exploration of feeling and perception in the modern world of advertising. Moving from monochrome to technicolour, James Graham's latest play is about seeing things too clearly in a city that never stands still. Barney and Nicola are advertising wonder kids. They win accounts with wit, charm and a secret weapon: Barney's ability to feel, smell and taste colours, and to translate these sensations into words. Lately Barney has been finding things far too colourful and wishes his full throttle London life was more black and white, but Nicola is hell bent on winning accounts at all costs. When the two hire an old Scottish Whisky Taster to help them with a new campaign, the enigmatic and mysterious figure slows the Londoners to a stop with his strange wisdom, just as the deadline looms. This play explores perception, sensitivity and feeling through the neurological condition synesthesia. Whilst the characters thrive on the surface with witty banter and accomplished advertising pitches, their real lives threaten to intrude with a deeper, darker vein of seriousness and potential despair. When every sensation can be turned into a marketable, profitable brand, they start to lose sight of the real value of experience.

Inspired by a true story, the play follows the trail of a young black con man, Paul, who insinuates himself into the lives of a wealthy New York couple, Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, claiming he knows their son at college. Paul tells them he is the son of actor Sidney Poitier, and that he has just been mugged and all his money is gone. Captivated by Paul's intelligence and his fascinating conversation (and the possibility of appearing in a new Sidney Poitier movie), the Kittredges invite him to stay overnight. But in the morning they discover him in bed with a young male hustler from the streets, and the picture begins to change. After kicking him out, Ouisa and Flan discover that friends of theirs have had a similar run-in with the brash con artist. Intrigued, they turn detective and piece together the connections that gave Paul access to their lives. Meanwhile, Paul's cons unexpectedly lead him into darker territory and his lies begin to catch up with him. As the final events of the play unfold Ouisa suddenly finds herself caring for Paul, feeling that he gave them far more than he took and that her once idyllic life was not what it seemed to be.

Featuring music and some good-old heart-warming Christmas spirit, A Christmas Carol is the tale of lonely old Scrooge who meets the three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future who teach him the true meaning of Christmas.

Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. Released shortly after his No Country for Old Men was turned into an Oscar-winning film, The Road's cinema version of the novel is directed by John Hillcoat, stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron and is an official selection for the 66th Venice Film Festival 2009. Joe Penhall's adaptation is a faithful, careful crafting of the book for the screen, fully evoking the atmosphere of menace and desperation. The Road is set a few years after an unexplained cataclysmic world disaster has left the earth poisoned, barren and hostile. While ash blocks out the sun and the earth no longer fosters plant or animal life, men either starve or join the maruading gangs of cannibals. The plot follows an unnamed father and son on a bleak epic across the wasteland and features a series of horrifc encounters in a merciless world starved of life and hope.

It is Christmas 1875 and professor Gabriel Stokes takes lodgings at the Sea house. No sooner has he arrived than the troubled history of the house comes to the fore with unexplained and mysterious happenings.

January 1948. Palestine. The British Mandate is ending. The UN is voting on who will control what part of the land. . .Ali is in love with Nada - but he is in despair. Her father won't let them marry because his brother Yusuf is 'odd' with his own eccentric, child-like point of view. War begins. As the villagers are scattered and become refugees, the secret that's kept Ali and Nada apart is revealed.

The book is based on the notes of director Frank Hauser who had a distinguished career working alongside a host of theatrical and cinematic figures, including Sir Alec Guiness, Richard Burton, Sir Ian McKellen etc and many others who looked to Hauser as a teacher and mentor. Based on a long relationship and many discussions with Hauser, former student, Russell Reich has expanded and enhanced these notes into a book. Acclaimed as a timeless classic, the notes offer a succinct insight into the craft of directing and acting: from understanding the script, to rules for rehearsal, how to talk to actors, how to get a laugh, how to manage personalities and difficult situations.

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