"All things pass is this your philosophy? Is there no room for love in your philosophy of life?" Renowned and best-selling novelist William Boyd, CBE, adapts two Chekhov short stories, A Visit to Friends and My Life, to weave a comic tale about nineteenth-century Russian provincial life, both familiar and unfamiliar. When Kolia is invited to visit his oldest friends on their Estate in the country he anticipates a pleasant break from Moscow life. But as the comedy of provincial life plays out around him, he finds himself adrift in a miasma of false expectations, missed opportunities, and unspoken passions.

Translated by Jennifer Wise. Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler - recast by Brecht into a fictional, small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade in the 1930s. The satirical allegory combines Brecht's Epic style of theatre with black comedy and overt didacticism. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written during the Second World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter, Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.

Set in a time of immense change, Dancing on the Edge tells the story of a black jazz group, the Louis Lester Band, as they rise to fame, entertaining guests at exclusive high society gatherings in 1930s London. While many recoil at the presence of black musicians in polite society, the capital's more progressive socialites, including younger members of the Royal Family, take the band under their wing. In this explosive five-part series, Stephen Poliakoff returns to television with his most ambitious work to date. Dancing on the Edge provides a new angle on an extraordinary time in history, giving us a piercingly original vision of Britain in the 1930s; a time of glamour, hardship, vibrant new music and financial meltdown. Combining the rich characterisation of Shooting The Past with the epic sweep of The Lost Prince and inspired by true stories of the era, Dancing on the Edge was produced by Ruby Film and Television for BBC2. Also included is the innovative epilogue to the whole drama, Interviewing Louis, where music journalist Stanley conducts a combative in-depth interview with Louis Lester. This funny and disturbing drama complements the main story perfectly while leading us towards a shocking and unexpected conclusion.

1974. The UK faces economic crisis and a hung parliament. In a culture hostile to cooperation, it's a period when votes are won or lost by one, when there are fist fights in the bars and when sick MPs are carried through the lobby to register their vote. Let those on the continent cooperate and hug and kiss each other on the ruddy cheek. Here in Britain, one party governs and we get things done. It's a time when a staggering number of politicians die, and the building creaks under idiosyncrasies and arcane traditions. a minority government? No one with any sense or gumption gives you more than a matter of weeks. You're gonna fall, and fast, and hard. So start finding things to land on. Now. Set in the engine rooms of Westminster, James Graham's This House strips politics down to the practical realities of those behind the scenes: the whips who roll up their sleeves and on occasion bend the rules to shepherd and coerce a diverse chorus of MPs within the Mother of all Parliaments. This country is being kept alive on aspirin when what it needs is electric bloody shock therapy.

Actors' Yearbook is an established and respected directory that enables actors to find work in stage, screen and radio. It is the only directory to provide detailed information for each listing and specific advice on how to approach companies and individuals, saving hours of further 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 valuable insight into the profession: auditions, interviews and securing work alongside a casting calendar and advice on contracts and finance. This is an incredibly useful professional tool in an industry where contacts and networking are key to career survival. The listings detailed in this edition have been thoroughly updated alongside fresh advice from industry experts.

New in paperback, John Gielgud: Matinee Idol to Movie Star is the most authoritative and comprehensive account of the finest classical actor of the twentieth century. This entertaining but critical biography charts the ups and downs of Gielgud's long and glittering career, from his young ground-breaking Hamlet to his later success in plays by Pinter, Storey, Bond and Bennett, and his recognition as a major movie star following his role in Arthur. It also reassesses his complex relationship with his great rival Laurence Olivier and throws fresh light on his personal relationships and the turbulent episodes of his private life that threatened to shatter his career. For this biography Jonathan Croall's exhaustive research has included over a hundred new interviews with key people from his life and career, including Peter Brook, Kenneth Branagh, Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins, and it draws on several hundred letters to and from Gielgud that have never been published, including correspondences with Noël Coward, Somerset Maugham, Siegfried Sassoon, Edith Evans and Edward Gordon Craig. What emerges is an intimate, complex and often startling portrait of this great actor and much-loved man. Gielgud's interpretations of Shakespeare's great roles made Shakespeare's plays a commercial success on London's West End for the first time. He was also hugely influential as a director and an actor-manager and worked extensively in film and television later in life. Since Jonathan Croall's first biography of Gielgud was published in 2000 a considerable amount of new material has come to light and the result is a much more rounded, candid and richly textured portrait of this celebrated stage and screen actor.

Frustrating, nerve-wracking, job-winning or job-losing, flawed yet necessary - auditioning is a maddening business for everyone involved. The people behind the audition desk are looking for a killer audition (often under tremendous pressure), but most of the auditionees walk into the room feeling nervous, unprepared, and unable to control their own performance. Although the idea of creating 'winning performance strategies' is common in business and sports studies, no one has ever really attempted to bring the psychology of creating a winning performance to a book on auditioning. Drawing on some fascinating, cutting-edge research into how the brain copes and responds in high-stress situations, Mastering the Audition looks closely at the effects of fear, at our flawed ability to assess or really know ourselves, at what really drives us, and at what it really takes to master the audition experience. Applicable to all areas of performing, including reality television, musicals, stage, film and commercials, this book helps you hone your performing skills and develop the mental toughness that can keep you going through the inevitable ups and downs of the audition process. Where other books advise you to 'be confident' and 'be prepared', Mastering the Audition tells you exactly HOW.

'Dudley Knight is one of the most respected voice and speech teachers in North America and highly regarded internationally.' Janet Madelle Feindel, Professor of Voice and Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University. Actors and other professional voice users need to speak clearly and expressively in order to communicate the ideas and emotions of their characters-and themselves. Whatever the native accent of the speaker, this easy communication to the listener must always happen in every moment, onstage, in film or on television; in real life too. This book, an introduction to Knight-Thompson Speechwork, gives speakers the ownership of a vast variety of speech skills and the ability to explore unlimited varieties of speech actions-without imposing a single, unvarying pattern of "good speech." The skills gained through this book enable actors to find the unique way in which a dramatic character embodies the language of the play. They also help any speaker to communicate to a listener with total intelligibility without compromising the speaker's own accent; and to vary speech actions to meet different language needs.

This version of A Government Inspector is a Yorkshire take on Gogol's 1836 fantastical Russian satire. The setting is here transposed to a small northern town in the twenty-first century, geographically and culturally remote from the centre of government. Into a small Pennine town a mysterious stranger is mistaken for a government inspector. Fearing discovery of their corrupt goings-on, the town's unscrupulous councillors attempt to ingratiate themselves. Bribes, backhanders and brown envelopes abound, and the young chap, who has an eye for a quick buck, takes full advantage with hilarious results. Deborah McAndrew's version of A Government Inspector goes beyond literal translation, but is absolutely faithful to Gogol's stated intention to peel away the surface layers of ordinary people and expose the corruption beneath. It's exuberant, brilliantly witty and original, and audiences will revel in the references to government officials' expenses claims and women's beach volley ball...

We all have sick thoughts. It doesnae matter what you think, it's what you do that counts. Trouble is, my thoughts do things. Don't believe me? Just watch.' Sparky is a bright but volatile 15-year-old boy on the brink of permanent exclusion from school. Then one day he falls under the spell of a seemingly psychic girl called Siouxsie and develops his own kinetic superpower. But will it save him or push him over the edge? The Static is a coming-of-age love story about what happens when our darkest dreams come true. 'A small room, bright lights, white walls, a metal door. Oh my God! Imagine you wake up in a jail cell and you don't know how you got there.
' Blackout is the true story of a 15-year-old boy charged with attempted murder who tries to piece together the events in his life that have brought him into a secure care unit and threaten to keep him there. This short play packs a big emotional punch with its stylistic economy and razor-sharp storytelling.

Your Last Breath: 1876 - Christopher leaves his young family behind to work in Norway. He will map the uncharted mountains for the very first time. 1999 - Anna's body freezes after an extreme skiing accident and her heart stops. But doctors gradually warm her until it miraculously starts beating again. 2011 - Freija, a successful business woman, has just lost her father. She travels to scatter his ashes in Norway. 2034 - Nicholas explains a medical breakthrough which saved his life as a baby, whereby the human body can be 'suspended in animation.' Spanning 150 years, Your Last Breath piece fuses movement, live piano score and video unravelling the landscapes of the heart and our own personal geographies. It was a Fringe First Winner in 2011 and will be touring, potentially to Scandinavia, in the Spring. After the Rainfall: Throughout history, the study of ants (myrmecology) has been used as an analogy for human behaviour. This piece uses myrmecology as a prism through which to view the present day. Navigating the arid Egyptian desert, continental Europe, the British Museum and a quiet village green, this piece is a patchwork of multidimensional narratives about the aftermath of the Empire. Curious Directive conjure a world where multimedia, movement and sound unpick Britain's relationship to artefacts, mining and the secret life of ants. An epic, thumping, passionate story asking questions about the relationship between our past, present and into eternity. A collaboration between Curious Directive, Watford Palace Theatre and Escalator East to Edinburgh, and it will play at the Edinburgh Festival (Pleasance Dome, 4-27 August) followed by a run at the Watford Palace Theatre. Olfactory: Over 10,000 different smells drift across our planet in various configurations. Olfactory gives you a choice to craft your identity and to decode the invisible molecules floating through the air. Who do you want to be in the future? This miniature explores our invisible relationship with perfumes and smell.

It's the end of summer in a small, claustrophobic town and two friends are about to go their separate ways: one to university; the other will be staying local. But no matter what separates them, they will always share one moment: a moment that changed them forever. This dark coming-of-age play, to be performed by the Lyric Young Company, is a disturbing look at the cruel acts we are capable of committing; our society's numbness to physical pain; and the consequences of our actions.

My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and the capital cities. And every prime number up to 7507. Christopher, fifteen years old, stands beside Mrs Shears's dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain and is exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher's detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside-down.

The birth of their daughter should be one of the happiest days of Ed and Lisa's life. An NHS maternity ward and their somewhat unusual circumstances make for an unsettling and satisfyingly comic sequence of events that tests their relationship to the core, and raises intrinsic questions about the nature of birth and renewal, fear and isolation. Subverting the received gender roles to darkly comic and disturbing effect, the play charts Ed and Lisa's personally fraught experience at the behest of an NHS labour ward. Penhall expertly weaves an acutely funny and emotionally charged sequence of events: he pitches wryly observed gender perceptions of a quite literal life and death situation against an indictment of the NHS system. The beautifully observed writing is at once vicious and searingly tender. Birthday achieves an intensely comic counterpoint to teh visceral domestic drama sutured to bigger issues of aspiration, sacrifice, who we are, how we communicate, the triumph of tolerance, nature and ultimately love.

Silent is the touching and provocative story of homeless McGoldrig who once had splendid things. But he has lost it all - including his mind. He now dives into the wonderful wounds of his past through the romantic world of Rudolph Valentino. Silent has been described as 'a moving story, which, until its end, pulses with the erratic noise of life' (Irish Times), 'a must see if ever there was one' (The List), and as 'magnificent, remarkable' (Irish Independent). By the same writer, Forgotten features the interconnecting stories of four elderly people living in retirement homes and care facilities around Ireland, who range in age from 80 to 100 years old. Both challengingly dark and startlingly hilarious, Forgotten is 'an unequivocally beautiful piece' (Scotsman), 'beautifully written and vivid' (New Yorker), conveying 'the secrets, the hidden past, of the aged, and the dignity often behind their quaint seemingly innocuous bearing' (New York Times).

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered in 1879 in Copenhagen, the second in a series of realist plays by Ibsen, and immediately provoked controversy with its apparently feminist message and exposure of the hypocrisy of Victorian middle-class marriage. In Ibsen's play, Nora Helmer has secretly (and deceptively) borrowed a large sum of money to pay for her husband, Torvald, to recover from illness on a sabbatical in Italy. Torvald's perception of Nora is of a silly, naive spendthrift, so it is only when the truth begins to emerge, and Torvald appreciates the initiative behind his wife, that unmendable cracks appear in their marriage.

What happens when love doesn't add up? Dr Paul MacMillan is a professor of Chaos Theory. Specialist subject: storm patterns. A month after the death of his father, Paul's life has ground to a halt. With his itinerant ne'er do well brother, Chancer, in his spare room, his girlfriend Emma pushing for a future and the arrival of a beautiful new PhD student , Zainab, prediction is proving increasingly difficult. Then the discovery of his father's final and surprise possession catapults Paul's world into real chaos.

This collection brings together three of Tom Murphy's finest plays, Famine, A Whistle in the Dark and Conversations on a Homecoming. Together, they tell the story of Irish emigration - of those who went and those who were left behind. Crossing oceans and spanning decades, Murphy's three plays cover the period from the Great Hunger of the nineteenth century to the 'new' Ireland of the 1970s, exploring what we mean when we call a place 'home'.

The gods never move faster than when punishing men with the consequences of their own actions. Desperate to gain control over a city ravaged by civil war, Creon refuses to bury the body of Antigone's rebellious brother. Outraged, she defies his edict. Creon condemns the young woman, his niece, to be buried alive. The people daren't object but the prophet Teiresias warns that this tyranny will anger the gods: the rotting corpse is polluting the city. Creon hesitates and his fate is sealed. Sophocles' great tragic play dramatises the clash between the family and the city and, with high poetry and deep tragedy, presents an irreconcilable but equally-balanced conflict. Sophoclean heroine Antigone has become a cultural archetype, the symbol of personal integrity and an icon of political freedom, whilst her co-protagonist Creon can be interpreted as either a civic saviour or a ruthless tyrant.

When Abraham returns home from a journey with his son, his wife is troubled by the boys state of mind. What took place on the mountain that day is the beginning of a lifetime of suffering for his son and the dawn of a new age for millions. A haunting and heartbreaking twist on the story of Abraham and Issac which reminds us that this historic tale of sacrifice began with just one family.

The water looks sort of angry, don't it? Racing across the mud. Like it's coming for us! Haven't got long. We have to move soon. On the muddy banks of the River Thames, downstream from the bright lights of London, three boys hide from the police after a night of recklessness. Over the course of the freezing night their fears, secrets and dreams emerge, collide and combust revealing the desperate frustration of lives barely led but already ravaged. Essex-born Vickie Donoghue's powerful debut exposes the culture she grew up with and sees on a daily basis. With brutal honesty she explores how the impulse to dream is futile in the context of a reality that has no space for dreamers. Mudlarks heralds the arrival of an urgent new voice in British theatre.

Old friends Carl and Mikey must say their farewells this evening as Mikey makes plans to leave the care home that has become their new stomping ground. Troll Face just wants to keep things running to time and Etienne is forced to see out his community service with two old geezers scrounging for fags. Shut away from a world where pensioners steal in order to feed themselves and dreaming of a youth spent in the dingy corner of a seedy club, two lifelong friends are forced to say their goodbyes. When memory is fading and the past is clouded with a lifetime of drink and drugs, what is true and how to live is called into question. Laura Poliakoff's debut play is a powerful call-to-arms for a generation of twenty-year-olds not considering their own old age. How we care for our elderly, where we put them and the sacrifices that are made fuels this often comic yet touching play.

As the severed human head of an Estonian woman is found in a river in Hammersmith, two British detectives set off in search of her origins in Europe and how she came to be found dead. Fighting to cross international borders and language barriers, the pair enter a nightmarish world that will change one of them forever. Three Kingdoms tells the stories of trafficked women, the gangs and the police forces across Europe that attempt to control the trade.

Supporters keh. Forget this country. How many year have you lived here? Your English is better than the Queen's and they still call you. . . When Kayode's election campaign for a seat in parliament fails, the Nigerian born MP falls into a pit of depression. Angry and confused, he blames his loss on his ethnicity, despite being beaten by another black candidate. His subsequent remarks to the press force him into hiding. Disgraced and, according to his friend, 'in need of a holiday', he returns to his native Nigeria hoping to escape politics. But here he meets his adopted brother, who is deeply involved in the corrupt politics of his homeland. Kayode's determination to change things emerges with fierce vehemence, as he becomes dangerously involved in a political power struggle. Bola Agbaje's satirical new play questions our notion of home. It examines what it is to be both a British and African citizen, and what happens when corruption in the two nations seems impossible to overcome.

I am nothing. Nobody. One day I could forget what I have done. Then I am nothing with no past. My knife is to tell me who I am. It is my passport to myself.' The Chair Plays are three one-act plays that Edward Bond has combined into one continuous drama on the state of society towards the end of the present century. Faced with ecological disaster and economic chaos, governments have become authoritarian and repressive. Domestic family life struggles to survive in a world of fleeing refugees, mass suicides, ruined and deserted suburbs, and soldiers patrolling the streets. Authority decrees even the exact placing of furniture in rooms. There is a knock at the door - but it is not the secret police. It is something even more disturbing. In this broken world sheer human goodness and vision asserts itself in stubborn and radiant ways. A master dramatist creates a range of extraordinary characters, vivid situations and radical theatrical devices to stage the central problem of modern life.

Bradley Manning is the 24-year-old US soldier accused of the release of thousands of US embassy emails to Wikileaks. On Friday 16th December 2011, his pre-trial hearing opened in Fort Meade in Maryland. Manning faces a maximum sentence of life in custody with no chance of parole. But just a few years ago, he was a teenager in west Wales. How does his story impact on the people he left behind, and who is responsible for his 'radicalisation'? The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning aims to place him in the pantheon of great Welsh radicals, from the Chartists to Aneurin Beva. This young soldier, who names the President of the United States as a defence witness, knows bus timetables around Haverfordwest. This young man who played a part in the Arab spring, knows the trials of schoolboy rugby. This young soldier who apparently chose his moral code over his military one, speaks rudimentary Welsh

Written in a fortnight and often regarded as Strindberg's masterpiece, Miss Julie is shocking in subject-matter, revolutionary in technique, and was fiercely attacked on publication for immorality. Sweden, 1894. Midsummer night's celebrations are in full swing but the Count's daughter, the beautiful and imperious Miss Julie, feels trapped and alone. Downstairs in the servants' kitchen, handsome and rebellious footman Jean is feeling restless. When they meet a passion is ignited that soon spirals out of control. Strindberg's masterpiece caused a scandal when first produced - and has been hugely popular ever since - for its viscerally honest portrait of the class system and human sexuality. The conflict between sexual passion and social position is presented in Miss Julie with startling modernity. The play's premiere at Strindberg's experimental theatre in Denmark in 1889 was banned by the censor and its first public production three years later in Berlin aroused such protests that it was withdrawn after one performance. Miss Julie has since become one of Strindberg's most popular and frequently performed plays. This new version by highly-acclaimed playwright and translator David Eldridge is contemporary but faithful, and combines accessibility with fluency.

The boy who comes back from a war far away in a wooden box is glorified and called a hero. As the funeral plans are made in a small Kent town, his siblings squabble over who he was. Maybe the fanfare isn't needed for this heroic martyr. Vera Vera Vera is a blackly comic play about what we are willing to fight for. Her first work for the theatre, Hayley Squires is a bracing new voice, clear eyed and loud, looking at violence, neglect and apathy. Depicting a gritty slice of social realism, Vera Vera Vera portrays the disjunction between the lives of the surviving family against the memories and patriotic commemoration for the dead. Looking at drug addiction, crime, verbal and domestic abuse, engrained racism, the characters' downtrodden and trapped lives are exposed with honesty and verve. This brave and uncompromising play questions both the validity of the myth of the martyred soldier and the true worth of survival for those left behind.

In the balmy heat of late 40s Naples, Filumena Marturano lies on her deathbed waiting to marry Domenico Soriano, the man who has kept her as his mistress for twenty-five years. But no sooner has the priest completed the ceremony, than Filumena makes a miraculous recovery. As he reels in shock, Domenico discovers that this brilliant, iron-willed woman has a few more surprises for him.

A young couple are moving into their new home. A soldier is being held hostage. Two boys are searching for monsters. All these things are connected by both family and time but what story can be told when family and time are broken? Set over the course of twelve years, Shivered unpicks the story of two families and then re-weaves it into something new and startling. Seven people, one war, a derelict car plant and mysterious lights in the sky come together in the Essex new-town of Draylingstowe, where the view from green hills once offered hope and prosperity for all. An oblique and startlingly anachronistic piece, the timeframe is an emotional, rather than linear sequence, reflecting the characters' broken memories and shattered lives. Depicting a panorama of people and time, connecting links of friendship, family and encounters eddy around each other in a tantalising, surprising and intelligent way. Shivered is a state of the nation play meets a dream like memory play.

It's the dead of winter and the summer vacation getaway of Long Beach Island, New Jersey is desolate and blanketed in snow. Charlie is 35, heartbroken, and just wants some time away from the rest of the world. The island ghost town seems to be the perfect escape until his solitude is interrupted by a motley parade of misfits who show up and change his plans. A hired beauty, the townie fireman, and an eccentric British real estate agent desperately trying to stay in the country suddenly find themselves tangled together in a beach house where the mood is anything but sunny.
- nytheatre.com

A young woman on the eve of her 30th birthday returns to her parents' home in the sweeping hills of the Peak District. But the house is full of memories, and down by the reservoir she hears a voice from a drowned village. In time, every secret must come to the surface. Keatley's atmospheric writing creates a palimpsest of the past which cleverly yet evocatively leaks into the present. She presents a clear continuity of wrongs repeating themselves and the damage they wreak lasting across centuries and generations. An impressively accomplished piece, Our Father's sustained atmosphere and strong characterisation connects with Keatley's trademark dreamlike sequences which defy a linear chronological structure. Reflecting how the past continually interrupts the present, the time device is fundamental to the play's meaning as well as its psychological themes of guilt, evasions, resentments and eventual revelation of secrets.

People always get the wrong idea about Essex don't the Len's on his death bed and the family gather to say their final farewells. His sisters still aren't speaking after nearly 20 years, his nephew's trying for a baby - and a bigger house, while his best mate Ken remembers Bas-vegas' when it was a village. As the spread is laid out and the ham sandwiches sit next to the wreaths, it's hard to see who's hungry and who's just greedy. In Basildon is full of explosive family dynamics and knotty relationships, embracing history, emotion and a strong sense of homeland. This depiction of indigenous Essex dwellers is uncompromising and at times harsh, but Eldridge also elicits deep sympathy for his characters as they face death, grief and crumbling familial bonds. The play is an epic family drama exploring inheritance and the myth of place.

Nativities is a darkly comic new play set in the world of petty office politics, designated smoking areas and the cheeky pint after work: Excited about her new job as administrative assistant at a call centre, Stella is eager to fit in with her workmates and they seem to like her too, especially when they find out how much they all have in common. It's really like a family at Scion Communications so when they discover that Stella is pregnant they're all delighted for her. However, as her pregnancy progresses, their certainties about love, relationships and parenthood are questioned and their lives both at work and at home begin to unravel.

How far can you see? A mile? A hundred miles? Or to the furthest shores of the Universe to a far away galaxy? It's Max's job to ask the cosmic questions. Passionate about astronomy, he works as the narrator at the city's Planetarium where he challenges his dwindling audiences with the mysteries of the stars and science. But in a society polluting the night sky with light and happier to explore the heavens on a smartphone he feels increasingly out of place. When his own life takes an unexpected turn, Max discovers that seeing doesn't necessarily bring insight and that understanding the universe requires a different kind of vision. . . Going Dark is a one-man show, set in a planetarium, devised by Sound&Fury. Using innovative immersive surround sound design, total darkness and imaginative lighting, it reawakens our wonder at the cosmos and reveals how one man's vision becomes illuminated by darkness.

On the sixth anniversary of T's death, his four friends meet as they always do for a game of snooker and a night to celebrate T's life. As they excavate the past and measure their own lives against T's, secrets are revealed and allegiances shift as quickly as the drinks are downed. Can they put to rest the guilt they feel over T's untimely death? And will their friendship survive the final betrayal? In a volatile political climate, Ishy Din opens a timely window into a strand of British Muslim life that often remains unseen. Through sparky dialogue, Snookered probes into the lives of these young men and their fragile masculinity, burdened by cultural expectations yet charged with personal dreams.

Shallow Slumber is a new play by award-winning writer and social worker Chris Lee, exploring therelationship between a young mother and a social worker. Dawn never thought motherhood would feel like this. Moira never thought she'd have a case like this. Unfolding backwards to the heart-rending moment when everything changed, Shallow Slumber looks past the headlines to the lives beneath. The play tackles the topical and thorny issue of social care, intervention and trust in a contemporary and relevant social setting. Inspired by the Baby P tragedy, this powerful two-hander has an intricate, innovative structure which disturbingly charts the onset of abuse backwards, from contrition and repentance, to the breakdown of the maternal relationship. With heart-wrenchingly realistic portraits and dialogue which combines fluidity with tightness, Shallow Slumber is an accomplished piece of writing, both structurally and emotionally.

In The Trial of Ubu, Simon Stephens takes the grotesque and amoral megalomaniac dictator from Alfred Jarry's proto-surrealist 1896 play Ubu Roi and places him before a twenty-first century international tribunal. Set in January 2010, at the International Criminal Tribunal sitting in The Hague, it is day 436 of the trial of the dictator Ubu. Sitting before a UN constituted International Tribunal, he is charged with Crimes against Humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. Simon Stephens' virtuosic satire examines the often absurd legal wrangling of the international justice system. The Trial of Ubu is a savage comedy that interrogates the assumptions of a Court as it struggles to deal with defendants who are not only opposed to the morality of law, but exist in a different moral dimension altogether. Exploring the central legitimacy and effectiveness of international law, Stephens asks how a civilised society can deal with the perpetrators of unspeakable crime, and wherein lies the legitimacy of any internationally convened tribunal. Taking a wry and intelligent look at the international courts when reduced to senseless and convoluted legal altercations, this funny yet unsettling play asks important questions about legal against moral justice, and the futility of reasoned argument in the presence of a heinous malefactor.

Fog is about two families: one white and dysfunctional, the other black and aspiring. Fog and Lou were put into care as young children by their soldier father, Cannon, following the untimely death of their mother. Ten years later, Cannon returns, expecting to reassemble his family around him. But he feels a stranger in this 'new' England of broken promises. And nothing could prepare him for the damage that abandonment and an inadequate care system has wreaked on his kids. He desperately tries to repair what has been broken, but is it all too little too late? Fog is a stunningly powerful and gritty play which confronts important social themes with a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality. The play looks at the care system and the effects on the children placed there. It explores the difficulties we face in trying to reconnect with people who have been absent throughout childhood, and the inadequacy of communication: words are used as loose sticking plasters to try and patch up and hide the exposed wounds of fractured relationships.

They have strong beliefs in Plainview, Kansas. And high school biology teacher Susan Pierce knows the score. A transplant from Manhattan, she arrived here with a desire to start a new life and a willingness to help out in the aftermath of a devastating tornado. Susan tries to tread carefully, but sometimes things fall out of her mouth willy nilly, like that offhand comment in her biology class about the origins of life. Folks in Plainview get up in arms about that kind of thing.

Tim Price's Salt, Root and Roe is a heartbreaking, humorous tale of love and family set against a mythical backdrop. Set on the Pembrokeshire coast in West Wales, identical twins Iola and Anest remain devoted to each other. Ageing fast, and with the time they have together more fragile by the day, they arrive at a desperate decision. Word of this reaches Anest's daughter Menna, who rushes to her long abandoned childhood home where her own ideas of love and compromise are tested to the limit. In spite of the sombre themes of death and bereavement, the writing is light, textured and at times very funny: picking out moments of joy and sadness with seemingly effortless grace. Touching relationships and believable characterisation provide a poignant backdrop to Salt, Root and Roe, where pragmatism, exhausted lives and childrens' fairytales collide in this exploration of grief, loss and acceptance.

The accusation of a Black teenager sparks disturbance on the South London streets. While tensions rise, a couple from very different backgrounds navigate the minefield between them and their families. The Westbridge explores the intricacies of living side by side, and looks at racial and cultural distinctions with humour and bite.

Morning in London, Autumn 2011. Across the city, people wake up from an identical, terrifying dream. At the same moment, a young man named John returns home after years away to find economic gloom, ineffective protest, and a Prime Minister about to declare war. But John has a vision for the future and his ideas inspire an increasing number of followers. With conflict looming in the Middle-East, their protest takes them to the centre of the city, to the heart of government, where coincidences, omens and visions collide with political reality. I want you to work out what you long for and go for it with all your talent and all your conviction and don't give a shit if you seem outrageous or stupid, or unfashionable. . . All that's needed, in the end, is belief. From the writer of Earthquakes in London comes an epic new play. Set in a dark and magical landscape of singing pensioners, fanatical atheists and imminent apocalypse, it depicts a London both familiar and strange, a London staring into the void. In a year which has seen governments fall and hundreds of thousands take to the streets, 13 explores the meaning of personal responsibility, the hold that the past has over the future and the nature of belief itself. What I'm saying is, you're right, there is silence. . . But you can read something into it.

As a young boy, Hugo Hamilton struggles with what it means to be speckled, "half and half... Irish on top and German below." An idealistic Irish father enforces his cultural crusade by forbidding his son to speak English while his German mother tries to rescue him with her warm-hearted humour and uplifting industry. The boy must free himself from his father and from bullies on the street who persecute him with taunts of Nazism. Above all he must free himself from history and from the terrible secrets of his mother and father before he can find a place where he belongs. Surrounded by fear, guilt, and frequently comic cultural entanglements, Hugo tries to understand the differences between Irish history and German history and to turn the strange logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation but not before the long-buried secrets at the back of the parents' wardrobe have been laid bare.

The night before his assassination Martin Luther King retires to room 306 in the Lorraine Motel after giving a speech to a Memphis church congregation during the sanitation workers' strike. When a mysterious young motel maid visits him, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people. David Harewood plays King in a hauntingly inspiring portrait that looks beyond the legend to a man wracked by fears for the civil rights movement that will be his historic legacy.

Beautifully atmospheric and infused with a sense of yearning nostalgia, the play presents a series of strange, seemingly coincidental encounters with others which evoke momentous trends in the city they live in and the shifts of society throughout history. Two former school friends are reunited with their erstwhile teacher, the glamorous, gracious Miss Lambert who is now engaged in nightly pilgrimages on foot across London as an antidote to her chronic insomnia. In the course of these nocturnal journeys, she witnesses a paradigmatic range of incidents reflecting today's society: the kindness and the violence, the glut of discarded rubbish and the sanctity of that which is carefully preserved, as well as the ghostly vestiges of the past.

One of the world's great folk story-cycles adapted for the stage by leading theatre maker Tim Supple, from the stories written by the seminal Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. This unique edition will unlock the ancient tales for a new generation of readers and performers. Written by Arabic writers from tales gathered in India, Persia and across the great Arab Empire, the One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad night after night, under sentence of death, to the king Shahrayar who has vowed to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. Shahrazad prolongs her life by keeping the King engrossed in a web of stories that never ends - a fascinating kaleidoscope of life, love and destiny. The tales that unfold are erotic, violent, supernatural and endlessly surprising. The web of tales woven by Shahrazad were exoticised and bowdlerised in the West under the title of the Arabian Nights. This adaptation unearths the true character of One Thousand and One Nights as it is in the oldest Arabic manuscripts. In turns erotic, brutal, witty, poetic and complex, the tales tell of love and marriage, power and punishment, rich and poor, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. The great cities and thriving trade routes of the Islamic world provide the setting for these stories that employ supernatural mystery and intense realism to portray the deep and endless drama of human experience.

Four contemporary plays from the HighTide Festival. A collection of four plays by new American writers curated from the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater, New York. These plays represent the finest works developed by the Public Theater, addressing contemporary social preoccupations: race, class, heritage, economic hardship, family values and identity.

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.

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.

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 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.

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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In August 2005 Hurrican Katrina narrowly missed New orleans. The resulting storms breached rotting levees and emptied neighbouring lake Pontchartrain into the city. Marooned by floodwater that swamped over 80% of their holmes, the inhabitants had to wait a week without food or clean water before their government came to their aid. Katrina uses survivor testimonies and the rich musical tradition of new orleans to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Staged in a five-story warehouse on london's South bank, Jericho House's new play takes the audience on an odyssey through a drowned city, enveloped in the most immersive of visual and aural designs, in the company of individuals displaced and abandoned within their own city

Punk Rock about a group of "A" level students in a private sixth form college in Stockport

A highly readable and non-academic approach to understanding Shakespeare's text - unlocking the hidden stage directions and actors clues that reside in his verse. 'When an actor becomes aware of them, s/he will find that Shakespeare himself starts to direct them' John Barton.

Elmina's Kitchen; Fix Up; Statement of Regret; Let There Be Love

A lively, critical study of one of the most important innovators, thinkers and directors in comtemporary world theatre: Tadashi Suzuki. This book explores Suzuki's theatre practice and contains a DVD with practical Suzuki Method actor-training examples.

challenging profession  but how is professional theatre actually made? What are the roles and what does each person do? Which pathways lead into the profession? What skills are necessary to each role and how does the job differ according to the size of theatre or company?

First produced in 1673 and Molière's final play, The Hypochondriac is a scathingly funny lampoon on both hypochondria and the 'quack' medical profession. Argan is a perfectly healthy, wealthy gentleman, convinced that he is seriously ill. So obsessed is he with medicinal tinkerings and tonics that he is blind to the goings on in his own household. However, his most efficacious cure will not appear in a bottle or a bedpan, but in his sharp-tongued servant, who has a cunning plan to reveal the truth and open her master's eyes.

An epic family drama, shot through with dark humour, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant tells the tragic story of a family disintegrating, having lost its moral values. .Arina is an ambitious woman. As a servant girl she marries into the degenerative family she works for, her peasant genes saving it from extinction. Her ruthless energy saves it from bankruptcy and she expands the family estate into an empire. As matriarch she rules with an iron hand, her avarice insatiable - until she begins to wonder what is it all for? She slackens her hold and loses her power to the hypocrisy and relentless grasping of her chosen son.

The library office of a provincial newspaper is a scene of utter confusion - the cluttered chaos of the room matching the lives of its staff. It is also a scene of warmth and light-heartedness. In comes Leslie, a new young assistant with a passion for organisation who transforms the office and the lives of its inhabitants into something orderly and neat - and also arid and colourless. An announcement that the paper is to close leads to a struggle between chaos and order.

Oh, you do look. . .really good, though. You know. In the face. Oh and, uh, I love you. Prisoners of their fear of falling things  keraunothetophobiacs  Jacqui and Robin are restricted to living indoors. When they meet online a relationship begins which forces them to confront their fear and discover whats real in their lives and what really matters. A History of Falling Things, a new play by the acclaimed young playwright James Graham, is a gentle love story  fearful, funny and moving.

Mary Stuart tells the story of the personal struggle between two extraordinary women - one French, one English - both captive to the demands of sovereignty and both caught in a tumult of political and religious intrigue. Which of them is the rightful Queen of England  Mary Stuart or Elizabeth Tudor?

Written as a vehicle for Cowards own acting talents alongside his frequent stage partner Gertrude Lawrence, Tonight at 8:30 is Cowards ambitious series of ten one-act plays which saw him breathe new life into the one-act form. 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.

The library office of a provincial newspaper is a scene of utter confusion - the cluttered chaos of the room matching the lives of its staff. It is also a scene of warmth and light-heartedness. In comes Leslie, a new young assistant with a passion for organisation who transforms the office and the lives of its inhabitants into something orderly and neat - and also arid and colourless. An announcement that the paper is to close leads to a struggle between chaos and order.

BILLY WONDERFUL is about fathers, sons, and football. ". . .there is one thing. One thing I believe in. One thing you can. I think . . . I really think . . . there is a thing. I believe . . . are yer listenin'? I do believe. I believe. In football." As one-time boy wonder Billy Walters relives his debut in a Merseyside 'derby' match at the age of nineteen, ninety minutes cuts across twenty-two years and fellow players becomes family and friends, enemies and lovers. Can Billy achieve his lifelong ambition of scoring the winner in the derby, and is there really such a thing as life after football? Nick Leather, one of the North-West's most prominent young playwrights, brings us a fast-paced coming of age story pulsing with all the excitement and physicality of Match Day.

mixes Victorian melodrama with a catalogue of grotesque comic tales

"I found you. You're here. And I was over there. But now I'm over here. I'm here. You're my brother. I love you" When Franz's mother escaped to the West with one of her identical twin boys, she left the other behind. Now, 25 years later, Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn, the brothers must struggle to reconnect. Examines the hungers released when two countries, separated by a common language, meet again.

concerns the random stabbing of an 18 year old boy by a girl of the same age one night in a london shop while she was out of her head on drugs. She asked for a pound, he told her to eff off, and was knifed in the heart for his brusqueness.
- Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph

The Stanislavski 'system' is still the only comprehensive method of actor training we possess. It is studied in schools and universities as well as professional theatre schools. The aim of this book is to show the slow growth of the 'system', from its roots in the tradition of Russian realism, and to chart the various phases it went through until the final emergence of the Method of Physical Action in the years before his death. It also provides a short account of the writing, publication and translation of his books on acting.

When Dave moved south to London he left behind his family, wife Joanne and mounting financial woes in favour of a playground of riches, sex and shopping. 10 years on and Joanne wants payback. . .with interest. Faces In The Crowd offers a unique insight into 21st century London and the debts we accrue in the wake of seeking out our ambitions.

Containing over a hundred interviews conducted over the last fifteen years with leading directors, actors and playwrights at the National Theatre, Buzz Buzz! is a fantastic compendium that offers unrivalled insight into the work and practice of the best theatre talent.

'A uniquely charming and enticing journey through a remarkable life. Coward's own record is made all the more delightful by the wise and helpful interpolations of Barry Day, the soundest authority on the Master that there is.' Stephen Fry

Inside Story offers the most important advancement in screenwriting theory to come along in years. This innovative method for structuring a screenplay is designed to kep writers focused on the heart and soul of their story so that plot, character and theme create a unified whole. Her method offers an easy to follow template for story construction, helping the writer to identify what the story is actually about, the thematic intention. It then uses the internal character development of the protagonist as a vehicle to drive the thematic intention and the line of action within the story.

Election night in the U.S. and things are looking rosy for the Democratic Party. Holed up in a hotel watching the results flood in are the likely President-elect, his wife, advisors and twenty-year-old son John Jnr. Every speech, interview and photocall has been carefully controlled and meticulously orchestrated, all leading up to this big night. At the same time controversial photos of John Jnr are gathering momentum on the internet. Whilst his father's advisors work against the clock on damage limitation, it's up to father and son to try and reach an agreement. Christopher Shinn's searching play examines religion, freedom of expression and personal responsibility.

Vasili Toporkov was one of the rare outsiders ever to be invited to join the Moscow Art Theatre. Although already an experienced and accomplished artist, he was forced to retrain as an actor under Stanislavski's rigorous guidance. Stanislavski in Rehearsal is Toporkov's vivid account of this learning process, offering an eloquent and jargon-free insight into Stanislavski's legendary 'system' and his method of rehearsal that became known as the Method of Physical Action. Spanning ten years - from 1928 to 1938 - Toporkov charts the last crucial years of Stanislavski's work as a director and offers the only reliable biographical sketch that we have

In the aftermath of an unspeakable yet avoidable tragedy, a family finds themselves torn apart by grief and turning for comfort to Daniel, the troubled teenage boy who lives next door. Having experienced their tragedy first hand, Daniel shares in their grief in a way that creates an individual bond with each member of the family. However, it is Marion, the dead boys mother, who expresses her grief through Daniel in a way that will ultimately lead both he and her family on a path that will irrevocably alter the course of their lives forever.