On the Fourth of July in Hartford in 1996, June, a sixteen-year-old white boy, meets up with a closeted, married black man he's met over the Internet. On the same night, in the same city, this man's sixteen-year-old daughter agrees to go out with Dexter, a twenty-year-old low-level drug dealer. In and around the city, on the American night of independence, these two couples get to know each other, moving from strangers to intimates. In lonely landscapes of movie theatres, fast food restaurants, darkened churches and public parks, they discover the limits of desire and the possibilities for transcendence.

This hilarious volume brings together three funny, vibrant and theatrical monologue plays for female performers. The Wheelchair on My Face by Sonya Kelly: Sonya tells her story about growing up with poor vision that went undiagnosed until she was seven years old. Combining memoir, theatre and stand-up comedy, this delightful story of a myopic child shows us how we can better the world even if we cannot see the world. Charolais by Noni Stapleton: A dark comedy of love, longing and an intense rivalry with a Charolais cow. Siobhán is forced to share the affections of her farmer boyfriend with his beloved, prize-winning French heifer. Overcome with desire, Siobhán develops a homicidal jealousy for this cow, while feeling equally murderous towards her snobbish, soon-to-be mother in law. The Humours of Bandon by Margaret McAuliffe: Nobody knows where their five year old will take that first after-school activity. To the surprise of her mother, Annie takes it all the way to the top - of the Irish Open Dancing Championships. Armed with optimism, drive and passion, Annie's about to learn that life doesn't always go according to plan. Developed as part of Show in a Bag, an artist development initiative of Dublin Fringe Festival; Fishamble: The New Play Company; and Irish Theatre Institute to resource theatre makers and actors. The plays were then produced by Fishamble, touring throughout Ireland, the UK, USA and Europe

When John takes a break from his boyfriend, his accidentally meets the girl of his dreams. Filled with guilt and indecision, he decides there is only one way to straighten this out . . . Mike Bartlett's metrosexual play about love and longing provides us with questions of who we are and who we want to be. John's refusal to fix his identity disturbs and disrupts the lives of those around him in this contemporary tale of sex without nudity and struggle without violence. Mike Bartlett's punchy story takes a playful, candid look at one man's sexuality and the difficulties that arise when you realise you have a choice. Cock premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 13 November 2009. It is published here in the Modern Classics series, featuring an introduction by Mark O'Thomas

HighTide Theatre Festival was founded in 2006 and has since become one of the most prolific homes of new writing. It has been described by the Telegraph as "one of the little gems of the artistic calendar in Britain" and by the Daily Mail as "famous for championing emerging playwrights and contemporary theatre". 2016 marks ten years of HighTide, during which time numerous emerging playwrights and new plays have shot to prominence. This anniversary volume brings together four of the key plays that have come out of HighTide Theatre Festival's programme during this time: Ditch by Beth Steel 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. peddling by Harry Melling is a poetic monologue about a young homeless man, which confronts whether it's a good thing to turn a blind eye and let people get on with their lives, or whether that's exactly how people fall through the cracks. The Big Meal by American writer Dan LeFranc is a deeply comic and touching drama that looks at love, marriage, raising children and the general onslaught of life. Lampedusa by Anders Lustgarten follows the day-to-day life of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules on immigration: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. All now established in their own right, these four plays demonstrate HighTide's extraordinary role in identifying and nurturing writers tackling some of the biggest issues of today. The volume was published to coincide with HighTide's 10th annual festival in September 2016 and features an introduction by HighTide Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson.

A real-time play for theatre and television. Set in the final ninety minutes of polling day 2015, live and in real time, The Vote will be an unprecedented national television event. Following their celebrated collaboration on Privacy, James Graham and Josie Rourke reunite to bring you The Vote, a unique drama, marking a national event, as it happens, live and in real-time. This live television event will take place on 7 May - broadcast on More4 at the precise time and date on which the play is set.

A clinical romance from the writer of ENRON. This funny and moving new play explores questions of sanity, neurology and the limits of medicine.

In 1974, a group of determined, young high school actors started doing plays under the name of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, eventually taking residence in the basement of a church in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago. Thus began their unlikely journey to become one of the most prominent theatre companies in the world. Steppenwolf Theatre Company has changed the face of American Theatre with its innovative approach that blends dynamic ensemble performance, honest, straightforward acting, and bold, thought-provoking stories to create compelling theatre. This is the first book to chronicle this iconic theatre company, offering an account of its early years and development, its work, and the methodologies that have made it one of the most influential ensemble theatres today. Through extensive, in-depth interviews conducted by the author with ensemble members, this book reveals the story of Steppenwolf's miraculous rise from basement to Broadway and beyond. Interviewees include co-founders Jeff Perry, Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney, along a myriad of ensemble, staff, board members and others.

'Once upon a time, the London theatre was a charming mirror held up to cosiness. Then came Joan Littlewood, smashing the glass, blasting the walls, letting the wind of life blow in a rough, but ready, world. Today, we remember this irresistible force with love and gratitude.' (Peter Brook). Along with Peter Brook, Joan Littlewood, affectionately termed 'The Mother of Modern Theatre', has come to be known as the most galvanising director of mid-twentieth-century Britain, as well as a founder of so many of the practices of contemporary theatre. The best-known work of Littlewood's company, Theatre Workshop, included the development and premieres of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, Brendan Behan's The Hostage and The Quare Fellow, and the seminal Oh What A Lovely War. This autobiography, originally published in 1994, offers an unparalleled first-hand account of Littlewood's extraordinary life and career, from illegitimate child in south-east London to one of the most influential directors and practitioners of our times. It is published along with an introduction by Philip Hedley CBE, previously Artistic Director of Theatre Royal Stratford East and Assistant Director to Joan Littlewood.

Butler Plays: Two brings together a selection of Leo Butler's work, currently both published and previously unpublished, covering the years 2007 to 2013. It showcases his incredible variety in style and tone, and brings together some of his best-loved works alongside some of his lesser known pieces: Airbag; I'll Be the Devil; Faces in the Crowd; Juicy Fruits; 69; Do It!

The first play collection from Anders Lustgarten, "perhaps Britain's most visible and visibly engaged political playwright" (Time Out London), containing plays from the start of his career up to 2015 with the most recent play in the collection, Shrapnel, and one previously unpublished play. The volume includes an introduction by the playwright. - A Day At the Racists; If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep; Black Jesus; Shrapnel: 34 Fragments of a Massacre; Kingmakers; The Insurgents.

This is the first collection from groundbreaking playwright Alistair McDowall, "an exceptionally talented and fast-rising writer. Still only in his twenties, this writer is surely going places. Whatever he dreams up next, his name will almost certainly be in lights at the Royal Court soon, if not at the National Theatre." (The Times). Having won a Judges Award at the Bruntwood Prize in 2011 and been shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Play Award in 2013, Alistair McDowall is one of the most exciting playwrights of this generation. - Brilliant Adventures; Captain Amazing; Talk Show; Pomona.

Drawing together the work of 12 leading playwrights, this National Theatre Connections anthology celebrates highlights from 21 years of the Connections festival with a retrospective selection of plays. Featuring work by some of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries, and together in one volume, the anthology offers young performers between the ages of 13 and 19 an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play has been specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department over the years, with the young performer in mind. In 2016, these plays were then performed by approximately 500 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional partner regional theatres at which the works were showcased. The anthology contains all 12 of the play scripts; notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play; and production notes and exercises for the drama groups. This year's anniversary anthology includes plays by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt; Simon Armitage; Jackie Kay; Patrick Marber; Mark Ravenhill; Bryony Lavery & Frantic Assembly; Davey Anderson; James Graham; Katori Hall; Carl Grose; Stacey Gregg; and Lucinda Coxon.

"Are you kidding me? Did we take Advantage? That's what we do, that's how the world works! When you Ask, 'Did you take Advantage?', I hear 'Do you make A living?', 'Do you breathe in And out?', 'Are you A man?'! Yes, we took Advantage! And the only difference between me And the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did.'' One of the most infamous scandals in financial history becomes A theatrical epic in Lucy Prebble's new play. Mixing classical tragedy with savage comedy, it follows A group of flawed men And women in A narrative of greed And loss which reviews the tumultuous 1990s And casts A new light on the financial turmoil in which the world finds itself in 2009.

Epic. In small ways. Jason, a wannabe DJ, is making his way through the streets of Dublin on a chemically enhanced trip, stumbling from one misguided misadventure to another. Somewhere between the DJs, decks, drug busts and hilltop raves, he stumbles across a familiar face from the past: his brother, Daniel. Daniel is an educated, homeless addict, living on the streets of Dublin. The brothers haven't seen or spoken to each other in three years but over a lost weekend they reconnect and reminisce over tunes, trips, their history and their city. Two brothers living on the edge, perhaps they have more in common than they think, but how long can this buzz last?

Imogene used to be sparkly, vivacious and outgoing. She used to fancy lads, have curves and love chips. Recently however she has become withdrawn, gaunt, obsessed with exercise. The reason? Caol, her new best friend, who's cast a dark shadow over Imogene's life. Invisible to everyone except Imogene, Caol will not rest until Imogene has been reduced both emotionally and physically to a shadow of her former self. Combining sharp writing and incredible physicality this piece aims to provoke compassion and debate around the subject of eating disorders, by separating the sufferer from the condition

In the closed world of North Korea, Yuna's sister Minjee is desperately sick. To save her, Yuna pays a Smuggler to help them flee North Korea - but Minjee is too sick to make it across the border. Instructed by the Smuggler, Yuna races across time and space to New York, committed to returning for Minjee. Yet the free world is seductive and confounding: life suddenly offers Yuna a distracting bounty of choice, and time moves much faster than in North Korea.

The Actor's Business Plan is a self-directed practical guide for actors graduating from formal training programs, as well as for those already in the business whose careers need to move ahead more successfully. Using the familiar language of acting training, the book offers a method for the achievement of dreams through a five-year life and career plan giving positive steps to develop a happy life as an actor and as a person. It assists performers to flourish using the same kind of business/career planning that is a necessary part of life for entrepreneurs and business people. This introduction to the acting industry provides essential knowledge not only for how the business actually works, but also describes what casting directors, agents, and managers do, demystifies the role of unions, discusses how much things cost, and offers advice on branding and marketing strategies. It differs from other such handbooks in that it addresses the everyday issues of life, money, and jobs that so frequently destroy an actor's career before it is even begun. While addressing NYC and LA, the guide also gives a regional breakdown for those actors who may wish to begin careers or to settle in other cities. It is loaded with personal stories, and interviews with actors, casting directors, and agents from throughout the US. The Actor's Business Plan is the answer to the common complaint by students that they were not taught how to negotiate the show business world while at school. It is the perfect antidote for this problem and can easily fit into a ten or a thirteen-week class syllabus. Offering support as a personal career coach, empowering the actor to take concrete steps towards their life and career dreams, The Actor's Business Plan: A Career Guide for the Acting Life is a must-have book for actors who are determined to be a part of the professional world

This collection brings together three of Coward's most important screenplays - In Which We Serve (1942), Brief Encounter (1945) and The Astonished Heart (1950). The collection features the shooting scripts for each film alongside contextual notes for each play, and a general introduction, by Barry Day. In Which We Serve earned Coward an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film. The film remains a classic of wartime British cinema. Brief Encounter, the most famous screenplay in this collection, is based on Coward's 1936 one-act play Still Life. It remains one of the greatest love stories of all time, coming second in a British Film Institute poll of the top 100 British films. The Astonished Heart tells the story of a psychiatrist's growing obsession for a good-time girl and the resulting tragedy this leads to. This collection features a foreword by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator Emeritus, Film, at New York's MoMA, and an eight-page black and white plate section of production stills

In this textbook for performers, the position of a Swing-an Understudy for the Ensemble-on Broadway is examined from every angle, showing just how vital Swings are to the success of any musical theatre production. Authors J. Austin Eyer and Lyndy Franklin Smith draw on their own experiences as performers, and gather first-hand stories from other Swings about the glories and hardships of their industry. The book features interviews with over 100 Broadway pros-Swing veterans, Stage Managers, Casting Directors, Choreographers, and Directors-including Rob Ashford, Susan Stroman, Jerry Mitchell, Larry Fuller, Tony Stevens, Beverley Randolph, and Frank DiLella. Broadway Swings is the ideal guide for anyone considering a career in this most unique of positions, or anyone curious about what really goes on, behind-the- scenes, in a long-running show.

This collection brings together Philip Ridley's one-act plays for young people, known as The Storyteller Sequence, ideal for teenagers to either watch or perform.
Karamazoo is a fifteen-minute monologue about one of the coolest, most popular kids in the school, whose recent increase in popularity is the direct result of a character make-over following the death of a parent. A witty and moving performance piece for the teenage actor.
Fairytaleheart features two fifteen-year-olds, Kirsty and Gideon, who meet for the first time and come to terms with their broken families by sharing their hopes, fears and past experiences - as well as stories - in a derelict community centre.
Sparkleshark tells of fourteen-year-old Jake - a victim of bullying and other teenager's mockery - who has to take refuge on the roof of a tower block in order to write his stories.
Brokenville features an unknown disaster, which has left seven characters with little knowledge of who they are or of what has happened. As an old woman and five teenagers begin to act out stories for a mute and frightened child, they begin to discover a little of who they were and what they can be.

Actors and Performers 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 and Performers Yearbook editorially selects only the most relevant and reputable contacts for the actor. Actors and Performers Yearbook features articles and commentaries, providing 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.

Race: Sparks fly when three lawyers - two black and one white - and a defendant clash over the issue of race and the American judicial system. Drawing on one of the most highly charged issues of American history, David Mamet forces us to confront deep-seated prejudices and barely healed wounds in this unflinching examination of the lies we tell ourselves and the truths we unwillingly reveal to others. November: It's November in a Presidential election year and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for re-election are looking unlikely. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. But Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet. November is a hilarious take on the state of contemporary America. The Anarchist : Cathy is a woman who has served 35 years of a life sentence for killing a policeman in a botched robbery. Her prison officer Ann must decide whether or not to grant her parole. Mamet once again employs his signature verbal jousting in this battle of two women over freedom, power, money, and religion

Delie is special and she's won a trophy for picking up litter from the mayor. Every summer she goes on her holidays to her Aunty Brenda who runs a women's domestic abuse refuge in a Yorkshire mining village. Delie and her Aunty Brenda and a pawnbroker called George who wears a dress are The Flannelettes - a Motown tribute band. Delie is in her twenties but with a mental age of ten; when she meets Roma - who used to live on the streets in Rotherham - the two become best friends, sharing each others' secrets. By the award-winning writer of The Glee Club, The Flanelettes is a tough, uncompromising play which looks at love and violence in a shattered community, all playing to a bittersweet soundtrack of Sixties soul.

A gripping story of how one woman went from a haute cuisine head chef to a convicted inmate running a prison kitchen. Sabrina Mahfouz's distinct, award-winning style and Jade Anouka's mesmerising performance make this an extraordinary new show. Leading us through her world of mouth-watering dishes and heartbreaking memories, Chef questions our attitudes to food, prisoners, violence, love and hope. Directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward and produced by POP, this show was made possible through a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship. A blistering way with language. . .this is how theatre can take you anywhere in your imagination ***** (Herald on Clean).

Nig and Wee Joe used to be soldiers. They have done monstrous things. Now nobody is listening and nobody gives a fuck either way. Their lives are full of cognitive behavioural therapy, valium and guilt. One last operation offers the chance to bring meaning to their actions. It also brings them face to face with 'L', who represents the new and unpredictable reality of war in Northern Ireland.

A beautiful and haunting voyage into the visionary imagination and dark dream world of the late Alexander McQueen, fashion's greatest contemporary artist. "I've got a 600-year-old elm tree in my garden. I made up a story: a girl lives in it and comes out of the darkness to meet a prince and becomes a queen." Alexander McQueen, 2008. A mysterious girl has been hiding in a tree in McQueen's Mayfair garden for the past eleven nights, secretly watching him as he struggles to find inspiration for his new collection. Tonight she climbs down and breaks into his house to steal a dress she could never afford to buy, in the hope of becoming someone special. He catches her, but instead of calling the police, he takes a chance and lets her stay. Together, they go out onto the streets of London and into the whirlwind of McQueen's life. As the girl begins to unravel before him, it becomes clear that she needs more than her dream dress to see her through the night. With its beauty, the world invites us all to live another day, and with each other, two troubled souls may just find the comfort they so desperately crave. This is a moving, poetic and unmissable insight into the fairytale landscape of McQueen's genius, as glimpsed at in his iconic fashion shows.

Johannesburg. 2014. Summer. Yolandi is listening to rap-rave music and helping her brother bust parts from her teacher's car. Thandi is swotting for her exams and keeping well away from any distractions. In the stifling heat, two teenagers collide. Downing Klipdrift brandy, they create an alliance away from everything else. But scars take time to heal and, as the thunder threatens to strike, the real world crashes in. Set in the eighteenth year of South Africa's democracy a tender coming-of-age story for a nation and its youth

With a live band, a big dipper and a freakshow, an entire world of escape and glory. . .The Funfair is coming to town. The Funfair is the world premiere of a new adaptation of Kasimir and Karoline, a masterpiece of 20th century European theatre. Dark, political and very funny, Horvath's play sets two young lovers in the throes of a break up against the hypnotic whirl of a funfair. Originally written at a time of economic crisis, Simon Stephens' new adaptation transports the play to a local contemporary landscape. It is an explosion of human dirt and magnificence, a roar of defiance against the threat of a rising right wing.

Charles, an African-American journalist, travels to Rwanda, five years after the genocide, to interview two nuns about to stand trial for crimes against humanity for their presumed role in the murder of thousands of Tutsis at a church. Charles arrives, thinking he knows who is guilty and who is innocent, but his two guides help Charles understand that things are never that simple. An Easter play for non-believers.

Auditioning for Film and Television is a must-have book and video guide for actors, written from the perspective of a Casting Director and offering practical advice on audition technique, scene analysis, online casting and social media. Auditioning for Film and Television is a practical workbook written from a casting director's point of view that teaches actors the craft of film auditioning in front of the camera. It shows actors how to use today's internet technologies to advance their careers and features success strategies and actual exercises to achieve results in the casting studio. A new edition of the popular Secrets from the Casting Couch, and now including video, Auditioning for Film and Television includes commentary, analysis and questions in workbook form for scenes from many celebrated films; exercises for actors to practise in front of a camera; and advice on career advancement and marketing in the age of social media.

This bestselling book by one of the world's foremost voice and acting coaches is a classic in its field. Practical, passionate and inspiring, it teaches how to use the voice fully and expressively, without fear and in any situation. Patsy Rodenburg has trained thousands of actors, singers, lawyers, politicians, business people, teachers and students: her book distills that knowledge and experience so that everyone can enjoy the right to speak. This second edition contains new revisions and additional content taking into account the effect of social media on communication skills, the need for empathetic listening, how scientific discovery now illuminates why and how voice exercises work and cultural and global issues of ethics and storytelling

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context, an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the major companies. Volume Two, 1980-1994, covers the period when cuts under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government changed the landscape for British theatre. Yet it also saw an expansion of companies that made feminism and gender central to their work, and the establishment of new black and Asian companies. Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including: * Women's Theatre Group, by Kate Dorney (The Victoria & Albert Museum) *Forced Entertainment, by Sarah Gorman (University of Roehampton, London, UK) * Gay Sweatshop, by Sara Freeman (University of Puget Sound, USA) * Joint Stock, by Jaqueline Bolton (University of Lincoln, UK) * Theatre de Complicite, by Michael Fry * Talawa, by Kene Igweonu (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

A collection of outstanding plays from one of America's greatest playwrights. Boston Marriage - David Mamet conquers new territory with this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing-room. Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming ladies of fashion who have long lived together on the fringes of upper-class society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald and an income to match. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a respectable young lady and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation. Faustus - A modern retelling of the classic tale of pride, folly and the ultimate wager. Faustus has it all - fame, success, a loving family. But a careless pact with a beguiling magician threatens everything. In language, scope and theatrical sensibility, Faustus represents a big departure for Mamet, melding resplendent language and metaphysics in an eerie and moving retelling of the tragedy of Doctor Faustus. Romance - Wildly humorous and often gob-smackingly outrageous, Romance is an uproarious courtroom farce, which lampoons the American judicial system and exposes the hypocrisy surrounding personal prejudices and political correctness.

Edited and introduced by leading cultural and theatre critic Aleks Sierz, this bold and urgent collection of contemporary plays by England's newest and most relevant young writers explores the various cultures and identities of a nation that is at once traditional, nationalistic and multicultural. Eden's Empire, by James Graham is an uncompromising political thriller exploring the events of the Suez Crisis, and the tragic story of its flawed hero - Churchill's golden boy and heir apparent, Anthony Eden. Alaska, by D. C. Moore features Frank, an ordinary bloke who likes smoking, history and playing House of the Dead 3. He can put up with his job on a cinema kiosk until a new supervisor arrives who is younger than him. And Asian. A Day at the Racists, by Anders Lustgarten is a timely examination of the rise of the BNP which attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction. Shades, by Alia Bano shows Sabrina, a single girl-about-town, who is seeking Mr Right in a world where traditional and liberal values sit side-by-side, but rarely see eye-to-eye. The Westbridge, by Rachel De-lahay begins with the accusation of a black teenager which sparks riots on South London streets. Among it all, a couple from very different backgrounds navigate the minefield between them and their disparate but coexisting neighbourhood.

Drawing together the work of ten leading playwrights - a mixture of established and emerging writers - this National Theatre Connections anthology is published to coincide with the 2015 festival, which takes place across the UK and Ireland, finishing up at the National Theatre in London. The programme offers young performers between the ages of thirteen and nineteen everywhere an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play is specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department with the young performer in mind. The plays are performed by approximately 200 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional regional theatres where the works are showcased. The anthology contains all ten of the play scripts, and notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play, as well as production notes and exercises. The National Theatre Connections series has been running for twenty years and the anthology that accompanies it, published for the last five years by Methuen Drama, is gaining a greater profile by the year. This year's anthology includes plays by Jamie Brittain, Katherine Chandler, Elinor Cook, Ayub Khan Din, Katie Douglas, Cush Jumbo, Ben Ockrent, Eugene O'Hare, Stef Smith and Sarah Solemani.

Based on the latest research from the fields of neuroscience and mind-body psychology, Acting With Passion offers a revolutionary new approach to the age-old problems of the actor: dealing with nerves, engaging the body, quieting the inner critic, auditioning, creating a character, and even playing comedy. With this step-by-step guide, actors who have struggled with 'visualization' and 'emotional recall' can learn an alternative method of accessing feelings through the release of chronic, subtle muscular tensions that connect into the brain at lightning fast speed and can actually produce emotions on cue. Written with verve and accessibility, and using practical exercises to guide the actor through each stage, Acting With Passion is the must-have text for actors seeking that magical 'state of aliveness'.

Recent years have seen an explosion of new Welsh writing for the stage. With the advent of Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru in 2003 and the launch of National Theatre Wales in 2009, there has been a tectonic shift in Welsh theatre and its perception. Wales has famously celebrated its poets and novelists, but in the twenty-first century, it is the playwright asking the crucial questions. Never before have there been so many playwrights of all ages, from across Wales, finding the stage to be the home for their stories. This collection is the first to officially recognise this new wave of Welsh playwrights. It showcases a wide range of forms, themes and political concerns, as well as representing the most exciting voices at the forefront of Welsh drama, taking the temperature on what be considered to be the first golden age of Welsh playwriting.

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to 2014. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context, an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the most important companies. Volume Three, 1995-2014, charts the expansion of the sector in the era of Lottery funding and traces the resistant influences of earlier movements in the emergence of new companies and an independent theatre ecology that seeks to reconfigure the mainstream.Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including: Mind the Gap, by Dave Calvert (University of Huddersfield, UK); Blast Theory, by Maria Chatzichristodoulou (University of Hull, UK); Suspect Culture, by Clare Wallace (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic); Punchdrunk, by Josephine Machon (Middlesex University, UK); Kneehigh, by Duaka Radosavljevic (University of Kent, UK); Stans Cafe, by Marissia Fragkou (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK).

British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts

Justice Performed: Courtroom TV Shows and the Theaters of Popular Law is the first study of the reality TV genre to trace its theatrical legacy, connecting the phenomenon of the daytime TV shows to a long history of theatrical trials staged to educate audiences in pedagogies of citizenship. It examines how judge TV fulfills part of law's performative function: that of providing a participatory spectacle the public can recognize as justice. Since it debuted in 1981 with The People's Court, which made famous its star jurist, Judge Joseph A. Wapner, dozens of judges have made the move to television. Unlike the demographics in actual courts, most TV judges are non-white men and women hailing from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. These judges charge their decisions with personal preferences and cultural innuendos, painting a very different picture of what justice looks likeDrawing on interviews with TV judges, producers and production staff, as well as the author's experience as a studio audience member, the book scrutinizes the performativity of the genre, the needs it meets and the inherent ideological biases about race, gender and civic instruction.

Contemporary Irish Plays showcases the new drama that has emerged since 2008. Featuring a blend of established and emerging writers, the anthology shows how Irish writers are embracing new methods of theatre-making to explore exciting new themes - while also finding new ways to come to terms with the legacies of the Troubles and the Celtic Tiger. Freefall is a sharp, humorous and exhilarating look at the fragility of a human life, blending impressionistic beauty, poignancy and comedy. 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. Drum Belly is a fascinating play about the Irish mafia in late 1960s' New York. It premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 2012. Previously unpublished, Planet Belfast by Rosemary Jenkinson is about a woman named Alice - Stormont's only Green MLA who must toe a delicate line between large, sectarian power bases in order to promote an environmental agenda in Northern Ireland. Desolate Heaven is a story about two young girls hoping to find freedom from home in the trappings of love. It was first performed at Theatre 503, London, in 2013. Written for the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival, and previously unpublished, The Boys of Foley Street by Louise Lowe is a piece of site-specific theatre which led audience members on a tour of the backstreets of inner-city Dublin. Edited by the leading scholar on Irish theatre, Patrick Lonergan, Contemporary Irish Plays is a timely reminder of the long-held tradition and strength of Irish theatre which blossoms even in its new-found circumstances.

Set in the 1950s, Brigit, a prequel to Murphy's critically-acclaimed Bailegangaire (1985), tells the story of Mommo and Seamus, grandparents living on the breadline, who are raising three grandchildren: Mary, Dolly and Tom, when Seamus is offered a job to carve a statue of St Brigit. Brigit premiered in September 2014, in a production by Druid Theatre Company, Galway, Ireland. Bailegangaire 'One of the finest and most inventive pieces of Irish dramatic writing ever - the power of its language soaring beyond the loftiest aspirations of Synge and its insights on the human spirit cutting deeper than O'Casey's' - Sunday Independent. A Thief of a Christmas 'Grand opera . . . both timeless and contemporary' - Fintan O'Toole

Introduced by the author, this is the first collection of Tim Price's plays. The winner of the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for Drama, Tim Price's work includes For Once; Salt, Root and Roe; The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning; I'm With the Band; Protest Song and Under the Sofa (published here for the first time). For Once: Through a series of interweaving accounts, For Once cuts to the heart of a family and a community turned upside down by unimaginable tragedy. Salt, Root and Roe: A wry, heart-breaking drama of love, grief and acceptance set against the mythical backdrop of North Pembrokeshire. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning: This award-winning play tackles one of the most controversial political stories of our age, placing it in the context of other great Welsh radicals, from the Chartists to Aneurin Bevan. I'm With the Band: A witty response to the Scottish Independence debate in which an Englishman, a Northern Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman struggle to maintain the previous harmony of their rock band. Protest Song: Price's funny and savage monologue which explores the reality of the Occupy movement through Danny who sleeps rough on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Under the Sofa: Previously unpublished, Under the Sofa is a mother's monologue about the experience of her son being in prison for a violent crime.

To paraphrase Alistair Beaton's Caledonia - the first play in this collection - 'The English have anthologies, the Spanish have anthologies, the French have anthologies . . . why should not Scotland have its anthology?' Scotland is entering a crucial period in its history, where its identity is being debated daily, from everyday conversation to the national and international press. At the same time, its theatre is resurgent, with key Scottish playwrights, theatres and theatre companies expanding their performance vocabularies while coming to prominence in national and international contexts. Caledonia is a tale of hubris and delusion, portraying a crucial slice of Scotland's history and its foray into imperial colonialism told with dark humour and creative flair, by award-winning playwright and satirist Alistair Beaton. Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond, is a unique theatrical experience exploring the world of magic, featuring mind-reading, levitation, and the most notorious finale in show business. Morna Pearson's The Artist Man and the Mother Woman is a wickedly funny, deceptively simple, surreal portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship. Rantin', by Kieran Hurley draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation. First performed at the Royal Court in 2013, Narrative by Anthony Neilson is a theatrical exploration of the the boundaries and possibilities of storytelling. Featuring plays from Alistair Beaton, Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Kieran Hurley and Anthony Neilson, this collection is edited by Dr. Trish Reid, a leading critical voice on Scottish theatre.

Simon Stephens Plays: 1 brings together four of the early plays from the winner of the 2002 Pearson Best New Play Award. Since Bluebird in 1998, Stephens has gained recognition for humane plays that display a sharp observation and compassionate response to the lives of ordinary people in urban locations. Bluebird: Cabbie Jimmy overhears the weird, wonderful and violent tales of his passengers he confronts his past and his estranged wife. 'A rough gem of a play' - The Times. Christmas: One night in an East end pub, four men confront their past and brace themselves for an uncertain future. 'Beautifully crafted' - What's On. Herons: The disturbing story of one teenager on a violent estate in London, which saw Stephens nominated for an Olivier Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2001. Port: One woman's struggle to cope with and finally escape her life in Stockport. (Winner of Pearson Award for Best New Play.)

The camera enables us to see right into a character's soul, revealing his or her innermost thoughts and emotions. Screen acting requires a more rigorously truthful and spontaneous performance than the stage, as well as very different technical expertise. From Stage to Screen is a handbook for the professional actor packed with advice on how to make the transition and fully prepare for a TV or film role. The book is divided into three sections: the first examines the relationship between the actor and the camera and how it differs from that of a performer with a stage audience; the second addresses the technical skills the screen actor needs in order to work as part of a large collaborative team and 'make the shot work'; and the third explores the very different experience of an actor working on a screen project, including getting the job, how to prepare properly, what to expect and how to manage the whole process, from casting through to ADR, in order to deliver the very best work.

Sulayman Al Bassam is one of the world's leading contemporary dramatists. His adaptations of Shakespeare, performed around the world, have won many awards and met with widespread acclaim on four continents. This volume brings together for the first time three of Al Bassam's adaptations of Shakespearean plays - including versions of Hamlet, Richard III and Twelfth Night - collectively known as The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy. The Al-Hamlet Summit sees the familiar characters of Hamlet reborn as delegates placed in a conference room in an unnamed modern Arab state on the brink of war; Richard III: an Arab Tragedy is a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare's classic, reworked and transplanted into the scorching oil-rich Islamic world of the Gulf; while The Speaker's Progress is a forensic reconstruction of Twelfth Night which transforms into an unequivocal act of defiance towards the state, forming a dark satire on the decades of hopelessness and political inertia that fed twenty-first-century revolts across the Arab region. The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy features an editorial introduction by Graham Holderness, positioning the plays within the contexts of both modern Shakespearean drama and Arab culture as well as an author's preface by Sulayman Al Bassam, detailing the plays' history of theatrical reception and outlining his philosophy of Shakespeare adaptation.

It's Mother's Day and mother is dead. Now her two sons gather in her home to argue about the truth of their childhood. But a storm is approaching. . . with violent truth all of its own. Piranha Heights is non-stop, filthily poetic and a searing insight into the disenchantment of young people today.

In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - arguably his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces deeply rooted in history and the society in which they live. Their estate is hopelessly in debt. Urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard and sell the land for holiday cottages, the family struggles to act decisively. Vigorous and profound, this new version of Chekhov's classic play by Olivier award-winner Simon Stephens, from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport, is an anguished and heartbreaking love letter to a society in violent transition.

Two brothers, Polyneikes and Eteocles, fight for the crown of Thebes. They kill each other. The rule is strict and clear: whoever dares to bury Polyneikes will be punished with death. Antigone cannot accept the laws that leave one of her brothers unburied and humiliated. State against Ideals, a young woman against a monarch, the whole town, us, inside the arena. How do you get a diamond out of a stone? 'I was born to love, not hate', states Antigone. And there is always a cost for it.

My brother's trying to win the war. He's fighting. We should be fighting. I'm brilliant at fighting. June 5, 1944, Southsea Beach. A girl named Poppy stands on the precipice of history. Tomorrow is the biggest day of her life: D-Day. Along with her friend Evie, Poppy finds herself volunteering in a Southsea hospital, preparing for the arrival of casualties of the D-Day landings. Poppy has always wanted to be a war hero, but instead finds herself being asked to do the unthinkable - provide a German prisoner of war with compassionate and tender care. A beautifully written play about the role of women on the Home Front during the Second World War.

He says they all do it. These kids, you know, they've got their phones. Film everything. Can't say I blame them. I would at that age. Seventeen-year-old Jack is the apple of his mother's eye. His parents, Di and David, have devoted their lives to giving him every opportunity they never had. As a result, Jack is smart, outgoing, and well on his way to achieving the grades to study Law at Durham University. But a startling incident outside the school gates threatens to ruin everything they've striven for: an incident that suggests a deep hatred of their son. As events begin to accelerate, Di and David start to doubt Jack's closest friends, Jack himself, and ultimately themselves - who can they trust? In a world where smartphones are ubiquitous, James Fritz's deeply provocative and topical drama throws a light on the sorts of insidious opportunities new technology offers - where nothing dies online, except reputation.

. . .its government has declared a vicious class war. A one-sided war. . . We have started to fight back. . . . . .with bombs. Against a backdrop of Tory cuts, high unemployment and the deregulated economy of 1970s Britain, a young urban guerrilla group mobilises: The Angry Brigade. Their targets: MPs. Embassies. Police. Pageant Queens. A world of order is shattered by anarchy. The rules have changed. An uprising has begun. No one is exempt. As a special police squad hunt the home-grown terrorists whose identities shocked the nation, James Graham's heart-stopping thriller lures us into a frenzied world that looks much like our own.

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

Ollie's sister is missing. Searching Manchester in desperation, she finds all roads lead to Pomona, an abandoned concrete island at the heart of the city. Here at the centre of everything, journeys end and nightmares are born.

The Private misses the farm. The Captain dreams of painting. The Corporal relishes the fight. and a hundred years later, The Woman seeks to understand . 1916 - In the darkness of the French night, three young soldiers, a private, a corporal and a captain, cross no man's land towards the enemy trench. Stealth is key to their survival and so they walk in silence, with nothing to communicate the thoughts in their heads save for the barest of gestures. 2014 - A woman goes on a day trip to visit the touristic monuments commemorating the Battle of the Somme at Vimy Ridge and the Loghnagar Crater - the site of a mine explosion that killed over 6,000 people - where she encounters remembrance, restaurants and bright, themed gift shops. Each Slow Dusk is a startling play about action, humanity, and the legacy of war. Immersing you in the reality of conflict through vivid, thrilling detail, it gives you a fresh way of thinking about war - from the past soldiers' perspective to the woman's present-day experience.

We don't actually drink coffee at my coffee morning. - What do you do, then? - We discuss the violent overthrow of the government. Also, there's flower arranging. In this intensely imaginative and daringly brave-thinking play, award-winning playwright Rory Mullarkey imagines a wild road trip across Middle England. Together, Lady Catherine and her young protege Leo enlist every tearoom, hot yoga class and Women's Institute group on a mission to change the country forever.

We're not playing Grandmother's fucking Footsteps, mate! Stay away, or I'll jump! Midnight at the Dartford Crossing; Roland's settled in for another thrilling night supervising the toll machines; Andrea's pretty sure she's come to kill herself. Neither of them wants to be there. Both think the other's crazy. Still, it's nice to have company. Two strangers on a bridge in the dead of night, a game of dominoes, and a value ready meal - HighTide Escalator playwright Vinay Patel's new play explores humanity, desperation and hope.

Back in the sixties, Travis Flood and his gang terrorised Bethnal Green. Now, after an absence of 25 years, Travis returns and meets Rio, whose haunting beauty leads him to confront a story that bears no relation to his own distorted memory. And then there's the Cheerleaders. . .a present-day gang, more vicious and terrifying that anything Travis led in the past. This edition of Ghost from a Perfect Place was published to coincide with the first major revival of the play at the Arcola Theatre, London, in September 2014. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ghost-from-a-perfect-place-9781474227629/#sthash.4dh4FiOJ.dpuf

William Blake, the poet and artist was born in London in 1757. He became an apprentice engraver at the age of 14 and remained poor throughout his life. He believed fervently in the revolution of the inner man, that only personal salvation and spiritual regeneration could acheive a better world, fearing that social revolution would only replace one tyranny with another. Blake died in 1827. Thomas Paine, the political thinker and revolutionary, was born 20 years before Blake in thetford, Norfolk. An active figure in both the American and French revolutions in England he was considered a traitor and in 1791 fled across the channel to France. After a period of imprisonment during 'the Terror' (1793-4), he returned to America, where he died in 1809 reviled by the Christian fundamentalists for what they saw as the profanity of his beliefs. Against this background, In Lambeth shows Tom Paine going to pay his respects to William Blake. Originally produced in 1989 and first published the following year, this new edition published to correspond with the revival at the Southwark Playhouse, Lambeth, London in July 2014.

Chess is in prison. Facing a lengthy sentence, her cell mate, Serena, becomes her soul mate. But when Serena is given parole, Chess faces total isolation. Hope comes in the form of a music producer looking for a reason to love music again. She finds a powerful voice in Chess. But to harness her talent, Chess must first face her past. Featuring Kate Tempest's trademark lyrical fireworks and live music, this is a story of love and redemption.

3rd May 1979, South Wales. Thatcher is counting her votes, Sid Vicious is spinning in his grave, and six Welsh miners are trapped down a coal mine. Within two weeks everything these men believe in and everything they know will have changed. A darkly comic drama looking at the dramatic two weeks in which a group of Welsh miners are trapped underground.

When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. When Sunnys attempts to pull herself out of poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is forced to question the system shes spent her life trying to master  and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and individuals struggling to shape their own destinies.

This area is gone to the fucking dogs. Gary returns home from college to confront age-old rivalries, bitter disputes, and bin bags that just won't stop falling from the sky. As Gary and his old friend Martin fight to find their place in the world, their mothers desperately search for meaning in a life that has already passed them by. Will Gary leave the estate forever or return to the rubbish heap?

New Orleans, 1836. Following an era of French colonial rule and relative racial acceptance, Louisiana's 'free people of color' are prospering. Beartrice has become one of the city's wealthiest women through her relationship with a rich white man. However, when her partner mysteriously dies, the foundations of freedom she has built for herself and their three unwed daughters begins to crumble. Society is changing, racial divides are growing, and as the household turns on each other in their fight for survival, it could cost them everything. A bewitching new drama of desire, jealousy, murder and voodoo.

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

Nobody knows us. They think they do. But they don't. In a world of champagne and canapes, the five Colby sisters are the glamorous faces of New York high society. With wealth, style and desirable husbands, they appear to have it all. But privately, the sisters' squabbles distort the picture of this perfect family. Image is everything and struggling to maintain it could have life-changing consequences.

Described by its author as 'almost irresponsibly optimistic', Saved is a play set in London in the sixties. Its subject is the cultural poverty and frustration of a generation of young people on the dole and living on council estates. The play was first staged privately in November 1965 at the Royal Court Theatre before members of the English Stage Society in a time when plays were still censored. With its scenes of violence, including the stoning of a baby, Saved became a notorious play and a cause celèbre. In a letter to the Observer, Sir Laurence Olivier wrote: 'Saved is not a play for children but it is for grown-ups, and the grown-ups of this country should have the courage to look at it.' Saved has had a marked influence on a whole new generation writing in the 1990s. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/saved-9780413313607/#sthash.vois2lvx.dpuf

Inspired by interviews with leading academics, activists, psychologists and educators, God Bless the Child examines the notion of childhood in contemporary Britain. When he was small and his parents told him if he was good he would get a sweet, the boy knew it was not true. Getting the sweet had nothing to do with being good. 'Badger Do Best' has landed, bringing with it a new world of rules and regulations. But the kids in the classroom are fighting back. Tired of being guinea pigs in yet another government scheme, can the class of 4N bring down the education regime set to pacify them? After years working in the classroom, Molly Davies imagines a mutiny of eight-year-olds in her play

Bitingly funny, challenging, angry and deeply humane, My Girl 2 is Barrie Keeffe's reworking of his iconic play for Dilated Theatre Company. My Girl 2 is a play for now, a play about making hard moral choices in difficult economic times - a play for 2014. "Ideals are worthless if you can't pay the bills." Anita and Sam live in East London. Burdened by debt, and on the eve of giving birth to their second child, Anita begins to wonder whether it was a good idea for Sam to become a social worker. Can they survive in Cameron's London on his wage with two children? Anywhere else it would be fine, but where he's needed most, can Sam make ends meet? Will their marriage take the strain, as the needs of family are pitted against the greater good?

Romance is a distant memory for two lonely animal lovers living in Dublin. When forlorn Dan and his dog Chapatti cross paths with the amiable Betty and her nineteen cats, an unexpected spark begins a warm and gentle story about two people re-discovering the importance of human companionship.

A 16-year-old London schoolboy and an 18-year-old recluse in Shetland meet online, pick a fight with the FBI and change the world forever. Tim Price gets behind the code with the original Anonymous members and creates an anarchic retelling of the birth of hacktivism. A fictional account of the true story of Anonymous and LulzSec, the collective swarm who took on the most powerful capitalist forces from their bedrooms.

On the run from tragedy, Lucas escaped Liverpool - then a city cast aside, a city crumbling. Now he's back, the old gang don't rush to welcome him home and ghosts haunt the ruins of their childhood playgrounds. The city chases renaissance: could his love affair with childhood sweetheart Lizzie blossom again too? Bright Phoenix is a wild, dream-like play about the carnival of the city at night; about a gang of rebel kids who still don't quite fit in as grown-ups; and about their love for a dying cinema and their mad plan to bring it back to life like a phoenix. Featuring live music, Jeff Young's epic and poetic play reveals the magic of forgotten places and dreaming beneath the stars

A 1967 obituary in The Times labelled Stephen Joseph 'the most successful missionary to work in the English theatre since the second world war'. This radical man brought theatre-in-the-round to Britain, provoked Ayckbourn, Pinter and verbatim theatre creator Peter Cheeseman to write and direct, and democratised theatregoing. This monograph investigates his forgotten legacy. This monograph draws on largely unsorted archival material (including letters from Harold Pinter, J. B. Priestley, Peggy Ramsay and others), and on new interviews with figures including Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Trevor Griffiths and Sir Ben Kingsley, to demonstrate how the impact on theatre in Britain of manager, director and 'missionary' Stephen Joseph has been far greater than is currently acknowledged within traditional theatre history narratives. The text provides a detailed assessment of Joseph's work and ideas during his lifetime, and summarises his broadly-unrecognised posthumous legacy within contemporary theatre. Throughout the book Paul Elsam identifies Joseph's work and ideas, and illustrates and analyses how others have responded to them. Key incidents and events during Joseph's career are interrogated, and case studies that highlight Joseph's influence and working methods are provided.

David Barnett invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht in this clear and accessible study of Brecht's theories and practices. The book analyses how Brecht's ideas can come alive in rehearsal and performance, and reveals just how carefully Brecht realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of Brecht's concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with his method which sought to 'make theatre politically', in order to appreciate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. Barnett provides many examples of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes a closer look at two very different plays: one written by Brecht and one by a playwright with no acknowledged connection to Brecht. Through an interrogation of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Patrick Marber's Closer, Barnett asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate production.

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams provides the essential guide to Williams' most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on four of Williams' plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers are wanting a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Williams' artistry. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-student-handbook-to-the-plays-of-tennessee-williams-9781472521866/#sthash.o4Ywm2kj.dpuf

How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays? Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.

Brecht on Theatre is a seminal work that has remained the classic text for readers and students wanting a rich appreciation of the development of Brecht's thinking on theatre and aesthetics. First published in 1964 and on reading lists ever since, it has now been wholly revised, re-edited and expanded with additional texts, illustrations and editorial material, and new translations. The resulting work is a far fuller and more accurate volume that will provide readers with a clearer and more rewarding understanding of Brecht's work and writings. This updated third edition features: Clearer layout and organisation of the text to facilitate study; New translations of many of the Brechtian texts featured; Over 40 new, previously untranslated essay; Essay titles now correspond to the German originals; A revised selection of illustrations.This selection of Bertolt Brecht's critical writing charts the development of his thinking on theatre and aesthetics over four decades. The volume demonstrates how the theories of Epic Theatre and Verfremdung evolved, and contains notes and essays on the staging of The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, Galileo and many others of his plays. Also included is 'Short Organon for the Theatre', Brecht's most complete statement of his revolutionary philosophy of the theatre

Long held as Britain's 'national poet', Shakespeare's role in the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad confirmed his status as a global icon in the modern world. From his prominent positioning in the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, to his major presence in the cultural programme surrounding the Games, including the Royal Shakespeare Company's World Shakespeare Festival and the Globe's Globe to Globe Festival, Shakespeare played a major role in the way the UK presented itself to its citizens and to the world. This collection explores the cultural forces at play in the construction, use and reception of Shakespeare during the 2012 Olympic Moment, considering what his presence says about culture, politics and identity in twenty-first century British and global life

Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings for directors and theatre practitioners, and is suitable for acting schools, directors, actors, students and teachers of Theatre Studies. Through these texts Brecht provides a general practical approach to acting and to realising texts for the stage that crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing. The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the Messingkauf, or Buying Brass, including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of Life of Galileo, Antigone, Mother Courage and others. Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, Brecht on Performance is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the Modelbooks

The 'Theatre of the Absurd' has become a familiar term to describe a group of radical European playwrights - writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter - whose dark, funny and humane dramas wrestled profoundly with the meaningless absurdity of the human condition. It is a testament to the power and insight of Martin Esslin's landmark work, originally published in 1961, that its title should enter the English language in the way that it has. Now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series with a new preface by Marvin Carlson, The Theatre of the Absurd remains to this day a clear-eyed work of criticism on a compelling period of European writing.

The Theatre of Caryl Churchill documents and analyses the major plays and productions of one of Britain's greatest and most innovative playwrights. Drawing on hundreds of never-before-seen archival sources from the US and the UK, it provides an essential guide to Churchill's groundbreaking work for students and theatregoers. Each chapter illuminates connections across plays and explores major scripts alongside unpublished and unfinished projects. Each considers the rehearsal room, the stage, and the printed text. Each demonstrates how Churchill has pushed the boundaries of dramatic aesthetics while posing urgent political and theoretical questions. But since each maps Churchill's work in a different way, each deploys a different reading practice - for many approaches are necessary to characterise such a restlessly imaginative and prolific career. Through its five interlocking parts, The Theatre of Caryl Churchill tells a story about the playwright, her work, and its place in contemporary drama.

Contemporary theatrical productions as diverse in form as experimental performance, new writing, West End drama, musicals and live art demonstrate a recurring fascination with adapting existing works by other artists, writers, filmmakers and stage practitioners. Featuring seventeen interviews with internationally-renowned theatre and performance artists, Theatre and Adaptation provides an exceptionally rich study of the variety of work developed in recent years. First-hand accounts illuminate a diverse range of approaches to stage adaptation, ranging from playwriting to directing, Javanese puppetry to British children's theatre, and feminist performance to Japanese Noh. The transition of an existing source to the stage is not a smooth one: this collection examines the practices and the complex set of negotiations each work of transition and appropriation involves. Including interviews with Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Handspring Puppet Company, Katie Mitchell, Rimini Protokoll, Elevator Repair Service, Simon Stephens, Ong Keng Sen and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the volume reveals performance's enduring desire to return, rewrite and repeat.

Replay: Classic Modern Drama Reimagined spans over a century of great theatre to explore how iconic plays have been adapted and versioned by later writers to reflect or dissect the contemporary zeitgeist. Starting with A Doll's House, Ibsen's much-reprised masterpiece of marital relations from 1879, Toby Zinman explores what made the play so controversial and shocking in its day before tracing how later reimaginings have reworked Ibsen's original. The spine of plays then includes such landmark works as Strindberg's Miss Julie, Oscar Wilde's comic The Importance of Being Earnest, Chekhov's Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the Rattigan centenary revivals, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, ultimately arriving at Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Taking each modern play as the starting point, Zinman explores the diverse renderings and reworkings by subsequent playwrights and artists -including prominent directors and their controversial productions as well as acknowledging reworkings in film, opera and ballet.Through the course of this groundbreaking study we discover not only how theatrical styles have changed but how society's attitude towards politics, religion, money, gender, sexuality and race have radically altered over the course of the century. In turn Replay reveals how theatre can serve as both a reflection of our times and a provocation to them.

We train because we are human and we become human because we train. This is the surprising and original conclusion of Anatomy of Performance Training, in which John Matthews shows how training is a very human response to the problems of having a body and living in the world. Using illustrative case-studies of professional practice, each chapter addresses a specific body part, offering a self-contained discussion of its symbolic and practical significance in the artistic, and commercial, activities of training. These anatomical case-studies are cross-referenced with other disciplines (such as sport, high diving, deep diving and artisan craft) to further expand our understanding of performance. Stand-alone chapters, ideal for reference, build towards an overall conclusion that the uniquely human practice of training is emerging as a new and pervasive ideology globally. Ideal for readers seeking to understand the relationship the body has with the theatre and training, or for teachers looking for a new, innovative approach to performance, Anatomy of Performance Training is an accessible, original contribution to the philosophy of training for performance.

Actors and Performers 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 and Performers Yearbook editorially selects only the most relevant and reputable contacts for the actor. Formerly known as Actors' Yearbook, Actors and Performers Yearbook features articles and commentaries, providing 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. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/actors-and-performers-yearbook-2015-9781472571984/#sthash.KGwRzYmj.dpuf

Nobody knows us. They think they do. But they don't. In a world of champagne and canapes, the five Colby sisters are the glamorous faces of New York high society. With wealth, style and desirable husbands, they appear to have it all. But privately, the sisters' squabbles distort the picture of this perfect family. Image is everything and struggling to maintain it could have life-changing consequences.

When Gaby disappears from her Scottish home, it is assumed that her Pakistani father, Farhan, has kidnapped her. The spiralling headlines are only momentarily silenced when it emerges that Gaby may have fled of her own accord, choosing to spend her life in Pakistan. To the distress of her Scottish mother, Suzy, Gaby declares, My name is Ghazala, turning her back on "Gaby" and, seemingly, the West. This moving verbatim play reveals a cross-cultural love story that began in late-seventies Glasgow, a world away from the frantic "tug of love" well documented in the world's press. A captivating new play about love, family and ever-shifting identities, My Name Is . . . tells the story behind an event that fleetingly hit headlines in 2006 and continues to resonate throughout the UK and beyond.

I ain't got a city named for me . . . The swans have though, haven't they. They got a city named for them. Seventeen-year-old Emma dreams of travelling adventures beyond her Swansea home. Rhys, her boyfriend, has other plans for them. Facing the consequences of their actions under the disapproving eye of Emma's mother, they struggle to find a happy medium. Now, camped out on Swansea seafront, they must confront the difficult question of what it takes to leave the place that shaped them. A story about what happens when life gets in the way of your dreams. Sam Burns weaves together a touching, sensitive play that tackles our conflicting emotions about the place we call home.

Circling the outskirts of Birmingham on the number 11 bus, an unusual and unlikely friendship develops between two teenagers. Meanwhile a young girl witnesses her mother dismantle a violent relationship with the man she thought she loved. Against the backdrop of a changing city these relationships force everyone involved to re-examine all they thought they new about love, trust and friendship. Interweaving and colliding they build to shocking conclusions. Rachel's Delahay's vivid and powerful new play boldly explores cycles of violence and what it takes to break them and is a visceral examination of the effects of such violence on a generation of young women.

"We are making little territories in your country, a hostile take-over of your garden sheds, your abandoned houses and your toilets. The occupation has begun!" Driven by a desire for belonging, two Romanian immigrants kidnap an Englishman to learn how to be English. Set in a derelict Victorian public toilet, Occupied is a darkly comic play about identity in crisis.

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

Captain Amazing is an alcoholic superhero with a penchant for open mike spots. Refusing to lie low and fit in with the rest of the population, he vents his disdain for the human race whilst entertaining and appalling audiences with tales of his day-to-day life as a reluctant and misanthropic superhero. As the night wears on and Captain Amazing becomes more drunk and more open, we discover his origins, his family life, and how even the invincible arent immune to tragedy. Using a blend of stand-up comedy and storytelling, Alistair McDowells Captain Amazing is the second of Live theatre and the Empty Spaces bursary winners.

A boy wakes up in a field somewhere in London. He's a door-to-door salesman: a pedlar boy. An encounter with an old acquaintance sends him into a frenzied questioning of everything: his life, his world, where he's coming from and where he's going to.

"Everything can be quantified. All worth can be quantified. Artistic worth. Human worth. Material worth. Everything. Some food is simply better than other food. Isn't it? Some clothes are better than other clothes. Aren't they?" The last week of a massive international tour and rock star Paul, is at the height of his fame. Everybody knows his name. Whatever he wants he can have. He can screw anybody he wants to. He can buy anything he desires. He can eat anything. Drink anything. Smoke anything. Go anywhere. As the inevitability of the end of the road looms closer, and a return home becomes a reality, for Paul, the music is starting to jar. A piercing new play looking at empathy, money and fame.

Set in modern day Jamaica, Kingston 14 follows the story of James, a black British police officer who is sent to Kingston to investigate the murder of an English tourist in a local hotel. Deeply tied to Jamaica by his father who was born there, he struggles to lead a proper investigation when gang leader Joker is brought into custody. The play comes to a climax when two police offers are kidnapped, uncovering corruption hidden in a corner of the sun bleached island.

They call it a civil war, but there is nothing civil in this. Nothing civil at all. They came from Damascus, from Halab, from Banias where the bombs fall day and night and the wounded children look like sleeping angels. Now they live in camps and abandoned buildings in Lebanon or Jordan. Now Syria is just a distant memory, a home forever lost. This urgent and extraordinary show explores the crisis in Syria through the stories of its 2 million refugees. German-Syrian actor Corinne Jaber was last in London with her production of The Comedy of Errors for Shakespeare's Globe's World Shakespeare Festival. She has performed with the RSC, in Peter Brook's Mahabharata and has won France's prestigious Moliere Prize.

Dance is part of the art of theatre, a part which connects to movement, to communication, to improvisation, and to performance. It cannot exist on its own in the context of dramatic performance, but works in conjunction with other elements to enable meanings to be created in performance. Dramatic Dance sets a programme for actors to perform dance as part of the drama, offering several approaches which can contribute to developing this understanding, to training this skill, and always ensuring that the whole active and thinking body and mind are fully engaged with the task of making dance an integral and vital part of theatre. To study dance in this way allows students to develop further their understanding of logic and structure in a dramatic text. Many books deal with one aspect of dance or another: some on dance training, some on dance history, some on Rudolf Laban's ideas, some as dance manuals, and some as academic papers. Dramatic Dance is the first book to act as a comprehensive guide for theatre practice, bringing together these different, complementary disciplines.

Shortly after the death of his wife, Lester Riley, an invalid who has suffered a premature stroke, announces to his three estranged middle-aged children that he is getting married again - to his young, sexy Japanese nurse. They are also shocked to learn that Lester has saved an enormous amount of money from his secret life as the exclusive television and radio repairman to a Long Island mob family. To stop the nurse from getting this surprise inheritance they must stop the marriage. They try every trick in the book: legal, religious, intimidation, psychological, and, in the case of one son, criminal. But they fail; or do they? Lester, it seems, has a few tricks up his own sleeve.A family drama, with a dash of dark comedy, Stroke of Luck explores the themes of greed and guilt and how to reunite families that have been driven apart.

We've stood up - we've lain down - we've concentrated. We've sat interminably while that tiresome old woman recited extremely unflattering verses at us. We're endured fiveseances - we've watched her fling herself in and out of trances until we're dizzy, and at the end of it all we find ourselves exactly where we were at the beginning. Researching for his new novel, Charles Condomine invites the implausible medium Madame Arcati to his house for a seance. Whilst consumed in a trance, Madame Arcati unwittingly summons the ghost of Charles's dead wife, Elvira. Appearing only to Charles, Elvira soon makes a play to reclaim her husband, much to the chagrin of Charles's new wife, Ruth. One husband, two feuding wives and a whisper of mischief in the air - who will win in Coward's unworldly comedy? Written in 1941, Blithe Spirit remained the longest-running comedy in the history of the British theatre for three decades thereafter. Dealing with relationships on both sides of the grave, it is an enduring classic. A new edition of Coward's classic play published to coincide with the 2014 new West End revival at the Gielgud Theatre, starring Angela Lansberry as Madame Arcati.

Coward's wit and precision as a modern dramatist is nowhere better exemplified than in this classic modern play from 1930. Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne (originally played by Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward), recently divorced from one another five years previously, arrive coincidentally at the same French hotel. They are honeymooning with their respective new spouses. Encountering one another by chance, each is at once horrified and fascinated by the other. Together they leave for Paris and begin a roundelay of quarrels and love intrigues that culminate in their getting back together.

I'm not doing a German accent You aren't doing an African accent We aren't doing accents. A group of actors gather to tell the little-known story of the first genocide of the twentieth century. As the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present, what seemed a far-away place and time is suddenly all too close to home. Just whose story are they telling? Award-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury collides the political with the personal in a play that is irreverently funny and seriously brave.

"I mean, what is Thebes? A theocracy? No. A meritocracy? Certainly not. A monarchy? Kind of. A patriarchy? Less and less so. Thebes is many things, and to revolutionise that? Well, how?". From Oedipus to Antigone, the story of Thebes remains a fascinating exploration of fate, morality and chaos, two and a half thousand years after the saga was originally written. The first domino falls as Oedipus realises he has unwittingly fulfilled a cruel and unusual prophecy. As control of Thebes is handed to Creon, his sons fight each other for the kingdom and his daughter Antigone is determined to serve the honour of her family to the bitter end.

after grad school, Catherine and Gwen chose polar opposite paths. Catherine built a career as a rockstar academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, unfulfilled in polar opposite ways, each woman covets the others life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs - the prize being Gwens husband. With searing insight and trademark wit, Gina Gionfriddos comedy is an unflinching look at gender politics in the wake of 20th century feminist ideals.

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

Good evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.

I did not kill my father, but sometimes I felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared with what followed. I am only including the little story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a large quantity of cement at our disposal.. In the relentless summer heat, four children retreat into an isolated world left to them by their parents, and attempt to create their own version of a family. In Ian McEwans first novel, The Cement Garden explores coming of age, burgeoning sexuality and the distortions of a 14-year-old mind. David Aula and Jimmy Osbornes stage adaptation approaches the horror of the story through the innocent eyes of children, and encourages an audience to remember the games, irreverence, and shadows of their youth: to remember and reinvent their sense of invincibility.

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

"From the despair of aninut, even in a short shiva, the ice inside you is thawing, Mordecai, it will open you to the world if you let it. After, shloshim. After a year, yizkor, yarhrzeit. And yes, sorrow, but also hope, hope in those who'll welcome you, love you. Let them love you. Don't neglect God now that you need him". In Judaism you have seven days to mourn a loved one, unless interrupted by a high holy day. Sadie died yesterday, Yom Kippur is tomorrow, so Mordecai only has tonight to say goodbye to his wife. Exploring themes of identity, love and faith, Shiver is a comic play about grief and Judaism. With moments of farce, as well as a touch of the surreal, this is a skilfully written play.

Oh What a Lovely War is a theatrical chronicle of the First World War, told through the songs and documents of the period. Devised and first performed by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London in 1963, it received the acclaim of London audiences and critics. It won the Grand Prix of the Theâtre des Nations Festival in Paris that year and has gone on to become a classic of the modern theatre. In 1969 a film version was made which extended the play's popular success. The play is now on the standard reading list of schools and universities around the UK and was revived by the Royal National Theatre in 1998, and by the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in 2014. This new edition of the play, published to coincide with the 2014 revival of the play at its original home on the centenary of World War I, is as edited by Joan Littlewood and returns the script to its original version. The edition includes an introduction by Joan Littlewood and an afterword by Victor Spinetti.

Tomorrow morning, you and Frank Armitage are getting wed. In my opinion, marriage is blind optimism at any time, but especially in wartime. It's an act of faith. Taking its title from a line in Philip Larkin's poem 'MCMXIV', An August Bank Holiday Lark explores the impact of the First World War on a rural community in East Lancashire. Set in the idyllic summer of 1914 rural Lancashire, everyone in the community is excited about Wakes week; a rest from field and mill and a celebration of the Rushbearing Festival with singing, courting, drinking and dancing. The looming war barely registers . . . but it will. Through the lens of traditional rural life, the play follows the stories of the people of the village and witnesses their personal transitions from exuberance to touching naivety as they manage their loss with courage and humanity.

When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But famine threatens the city, the citizens' hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people. This is one of Shakespeare's last tragedies, best known for its political and military themes. Shakespeare's searing play of political manipulation and revenge is here abridged and this version was first produced at the Donmar Warehouse, London, directed by Josie Rourke and with Tom Hiddleston in the title role. The script has been edited and abridged by Rob Hastie and Josie Rourke.

We're just the least lucky girls in all the world. All three of us. You and me and Ruthy have been given a big sad spoon of bad luck. A girl growing up in a battered part of Stockport in a battered time at the end of the Seventies falls in love with the man who will break her heart into a thousand pieces. Blindsided is a surprising and romantic play about warped love, jealousy, and damaged lives, spanning from the beginnings of the Thatcher Government in 1979 to the birth of New Labour in 1997.

If you hadn't lied and I hadn't told the truth. How different things might have been. Night falls, bringing strange sounds and dark thoughts. In the morning room a couple revisit the intimate argument that holds their marriage together. With only the past to entertain them, are crosswords, sewing and the odd drink all they have to live for? The World Premiere of Conservatory looks through the glass on to a family's dark past. Following years of isolation and denial, can they finally admit to the secret that binds them together? Acclaimed playwright Michael West returns with this searing and compassionate tale of married life, directed by Michael Barker-Caven.

Stanislavski was the first to outline a systematic approach for using our experience, imagination and observation to create truthful acting. 150 years after his birth, his approach is more widely embraced and taught throughout the world  but is still often rejected, misunderstood and misapplied. In Acting Stanislavski, John Gillett offers a clear, accessible and comprehensive account of the Stanislavski approach, from the actors training to final performance.

Voice into Acting focuses, not simply on voice as a skill or ways to approach text, but on how to integrate voice into acting process and performance. How can actors bridge the gap between themselves and the text and action of a script, and integrate fully their learned vocal skills? How do we make an imaginary world real, create the life of a role, and fully embody it vocally and physically so that voice and acting become one? Christina Gutekunst and John Gillett unite their depth of experience in voice training and acting to bring the two together in a unified and comprehensive approach informed by Stanislavski and his successors - the approach taught to actors in drama schools throughout the world and which draws on natural human experience in the creation of a role.

It's unusual, isn't it, for a girl to grow a tail at my age? Owen can't seem to write, Thom's exhaust pipe is ruined, and Holly is turning into a cow. As the situation worsens Owen is forced to choose between his blunt and exciting friend Thom, or his love for the increasingly bovine Holly. Owen knows the effects Holly's transformation are having on him, but he is scared that if he gives up on the one he loves, he'll be no better than Thom - a man who is the epitome of opportunism and shallow self-interest. The Cow Play is a hilarious, touching and bizarre story, an absurd black comedy about the ethics of trying to save those we love.

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

Look at us, Margaret - the press is on our side. We're heroes: the public is behind us, we're protecting our children, the party is united behind the cause. You can stand against it if you want, but you will stand alone. Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female Prime Minister, gets lost around the streets of Soho on the eve of the vote for Section 28. Unwittingly, she finds herself quickly becoming a cabaret sensation within London's gay community. This camp political drag cabaret explores, through songs and laughter, homophobia and censorship, and how one person could have made a difference.

Tonight Neverland is fleshed out with plenty of plant life, certainly bettering 2011's production of Jack and the Bean-Cactus. So, with no further ado, please put your hands together for J.M. Barrie's Christmas classic: Peter Pan! The inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society set out to present J.M. Barrie's classic tale of Peter Pan, their most audacious production to date. Flying? Pyrotechnics? Sharp hooks? What ensues is two acts of hysterical disaster. You'll laugh, they'll cry. Something so wrong has never been so right. From the mischievous minds of the West End and Edinburgh hit The Play That Goes Wrong comes this highly original, chaos-filled re-telling of J.M. Barrie's much-loved classic.

And do you know why I was called by that name? Because I decided who would be saved and who would be condemned. I took that responsibility for others and now I take it for myself. I am Black Jesus. I do not crawl. Zimbabwe. 2015. The Mugabe Government has fallen and investigations into its abuses have begun. Eunice Ncube, working for the new Truth and Justice Commission, begins the interviewing of Gabriel Chibamu, one of the most infamous perpetrators of the horrors of the Mugabe regime. As Gabriel's trial and inevitable prosecution approach, Eunice begins to sift through the past  only to find that right and wrong, and guilt and innocence, are far less clear than she first thought . . .

Join characters from across Europe as they struggle to make sense of their ever-changing countries. From a confused Arts funding panel in Brussels to a young couple suspected of being terrorists, a multi-cultural mix of 21st Century issues are explored in this satiric and savagely comic snapshot of European life. Post 9/11 paranoia, neo-fascism and a crumbling currency entwine in this exciting new production - the result of a unique collaboration between theatres in the UK, Germany, Poland and Croatia. the differing viewpoints and four languages have combined to create a must-see explosive exploration of a continent in crisis. This edition features both the multi-lingual and the English text, and has an introduction by the dramaturg behind the project, Caroline Jester.

Simeon Duff is working class, unemployed and desperate. His wife works. He's lost all self esteem. He's on the scrap heap and wants to end it all... and so begins this brilliantly insane comedy about a man on the edge. When word gets out that Duff is going to top himself, a host of ne'er-do-wells crawl out of the woodwork, each wanting to claim his grand gesture for their 'noble cause'. Let's face it, why waste a death? But which cause shall it be. . .love, politics, religion, or the rising price of fish? Will the disillusioned Duff go through with it? Will he really top himself for a dubious cause? Is he worth it? Watch and see & the suspense will kill you, if you don't die laughing first.

Ninteen-year-old science genius Luke finally has some peace to work on the extraordinary box in his living room, holed up in a dingy flat on a near-abandoned Middlesborough housing estate. After his unbalanced brother Rob introduces him to a wealthy out-of-towner they're thrown in to a dangerous world that threatens to tear the brothers apart and unleash the power inside his invention...

In his chamber, Bluebeard talks with tender intimacy. His passion is disconcerting, as is his belief in the beauty of his deviant, violent, sexual acts. Will he repulse or entertain? Or will he seduce you? With its provocative, intelligently handled exploration of sexually motivated violence, Bluebeard is a psycho-sexual, stark and violent reimagining of the famous fairy-tale.

Late thirties, careers under their belts and a new baby just arrived. Isn't that what everybody wants? Faced with the reality of her new life, Joanna tries to make sense of the events and decisions which led her to this point. Full of regret, with a husband who's pretending that everything's fine, the last thing she needs is her ex-lover turning up with an unexpected guest. Or maybe it's exactly what she needs. A wry, provocative look at what it is to be a woman today, in a society which tells us we can have it all and our ambitions can be unlimited.

A passionate love story set between London and Cyprus. Alexandra, a refugee from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has made a home in London and cocooned herself from ghosts of the past. There, she meets Jonathan, an English classical scholar, who falls deeply in love with her. Against a backdrop of war and the partition of countries, can love overcome the grief of the past?

An Englishman, a Northern Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman walked into a recording studio, creating the Union. Commercially successful and critically acclaimed, the pioneering Indie Rock band is on the verge of breaking up. When financial disaster strikes and Scottish guitarist Barry leaves the band, artistic differences go head to head with alliances that run deep. Can the Union survive? Written by Olivier-nominated Tim Price, Im With the Band is a witty response to our changing political landscape, with music from the four piece.

When Alice falls down a mysterious rabbit hole she stumbles upon a magical fantasy world where anything can happen . . . Take tea with the Mad Hatter, meet the White Rabbit, grin with the Cheshire Cat, and play croquet with the Queen of Hearts, but whatever you do . . . don't lose your head! Lewis Carroll's classic characters spring to life in an enchanting show for the whole family, bursting with music, madness and mystery. Simon Reade's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's much-loved fantasy classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a witty and brilliantly inventive re-working, which won the TMA Award for Best Show for Young People.

It's Cougar's birthday. He's having a party. And the gift he'd kill for is youth. . .In a strange room in East London the party preparations are under way. Everything has been planned to the last detail. Surely nothing can go wrong? After all, there's the specially made birthday cake, the specially written cards, the specially chosen guest of honour... and a very, very sharp knife.

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

Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler  recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. 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. This version, originally translated by George Tabori, has been revised by leading Scottish playwright Alistair Beaton.

Lucy and Jim are alone. To the world they seem to be doing all right: they have jobs, friends, ambitions (well sort of). But inside they are drowning. Until their chance meeting on a London night bus leads to a desperate search for redemption, each through the other. Inevitably, though, their hopes for salvation are dashed as deep-rooted insecurities rise to the surface. An unflinching look at the opposing human needs for companionship and self-destruction. Sharp observations transform the mundane into the epic, and this grim, witty and agonizingly accurate text will pierce the heart of anyone who has ever been in love.

It's 1958. Beatie Bryant has been to London and fallen in love with Ronnie, a young socialist. As she anxiously awaits his arrival to meet her family at their Norfolk farm, her head is swimming with new ideas. Ideas of a bolder, freer world which promise to clash with their rural way of life. Roots is the remarkable centrepiece of Wesker's seminal post-war trilogy. It was first performed in 1959 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, before transferring to the Royal Court. It is the second play in a trilogy comprising Chicken Soup with Barley and I'm Talking About Jerusalem. It went on to transfer to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End. A true classic, Roots is an affecting portrait of a young woman finding her voice at a time of unprecedented social change.

"Nhamo you are a legend of African Folklore! Hollywood awaits!" With just 24 hours to create the ultimate African fable, the superstar cast is missing a hero. Suddenly, a dashing goatherd appears on the horizon. . .Nhamo. Is he the One? Storytelling is turned on its head in this Zimbabwean comedy of epic. . .epicness!

A powerful re-imagining of Joe Corrie's neglected classic about a Fife mining community during the General Strike. To raise funds for the soup kitchens feeding the miners and their starving families, Corrie wrote In Time O' Strife in 1926 whilst on strike himself, exposing the brutal lives of a family staring hunger and defeat in the face. Some 87 years later, Graham McLaren has adapted, designed and directed this rarely performed classic play. Created by Graham McLaren (Men Should Weep, A Christmas Carol), the production uses fragments of Corrie's other plays, poems and songs, celebrating his ability as a writer and his contribution to Scottish culture.

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

This work from New Zealand, inspired by Denis Glover's poem The Magpies, an ordinary couple with an extraordinary love relive their darkest secrets, deepest passions and heart-breaking truths. Throughout all the moments of doubt that life has thrown at them, as long as they can be together, they wouldnt change a thing. This is their final opportunity to say all the things they never had the chance to say before.

Josephine Baker: captivating performer, political activist and international icon, who lived from 1906 to 1975. From the ragtime rhythms of St Louis and the intoxicating sounds of 1920s Paris, to present-day London, Josephine and I intertwines the story of a modern-day girl with that of one of the greatest, yet largely forgotten, stars of the twentieth century. Cush Jumbo stars in the premiere of her debut play, which centres on the legendary American entertainer and her impact on a contemporary young woman. Live music combines with dance to bring to life the contemporary legacy of a woman Ernest Hemingway described as "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw, and ever will."

A strongly issue-led play, Burning Monkey relates the story of a teenage couple and their interactions with an older war veteran, trying to rebuild his fractured relationship with his daughter. While their exchanges initially show a hostile and unsympathetic clash of generations, it soon becomes apparent that they share similar pain - based on their damaged family relationships, and absent parents/children - and they begin to feel empathy for one anothers plight. In the background, the presence of war looms; the character of Old is haunted by memories of his time as a soldier and the character of Monkey looks forward to a time when he can escape the depressing realities of his life and join the army. In the midst of this, Shell is fifteen, madly in love with Monkey, and pregnant with his child. Her attempts to try and make the irresponsible, immature Monkey stay with her become increasingly desperate. Burning Monkey is a play that raises important issues for teenagers, addressing themes such as war, violence, separated families and responsibility.

"I'm making a decision. I'm changing things. This is it." Three old friends. One remarkable day. For Ted, Danny and Charlotte, it's time to seize control. Make a difference. Change things. This is it. A day-glo trip through the parks and raves and cafes of South London, where life is what you make it. The rapid fire rhymes of Kate Tempest paint a picture of lives less ordinary in an unforgiving world, sound-tracked by an exhilarating score. Kate Tempest is the UK's most exciting performance poet, currently serving up a storm in the UK hip-hop scene with her band Sound Of Rum. Wasted is her debut play and features her trademark lyrical ferocity in a dynamic theatrical staging. A play about love, life and losing your mind.

Tales of the Tricycle Theatre provides an inside look at the history of the north London theatre which has achieved renown with its staging of black, Irish, verbatim and political drama. Co-published with the Society for Theatre Research, the book draws extensively on archival research and interviews with actors, playwrights, directors, designers and board members to document and celebrate the work of one of Londons most artistically exciting and politically engaged theatres. Terry Stoller presents the Tricycles story, giving you a front-row view of the theatres productions, including: - the work of generations of black British writers, from Mustapha Matura and Alfred Fagon to Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Bola Agbaje. - Irish plays ranging from Bernard Shaws John Bulls Other Island to Brendan Behans The Hostage. - its critically lauded political play cycles The Bomb  A Partial History and The Great Game: Afghanistan, the latter performed at the Pentagon in 2011.

everyday life, is it nothing but a series of creeping, soul destroying disillusionments and compromises? This young couple start to think so, falling further and further into a lyrical, wild and emotional world of their own, but their escape could prove much more dangerous than the conformity they've rejected.

How do you want to live here? I mean we could come and go and lead separate lives. Or we could really live together. What do you think?' aged 18, three women join forces. Life is fun. Living is intense. Together they feel unassailable. Crackling with wisdom and wit, Di and Viv and Rose is a humorous and thoughtful exploration of friendship's impact on life and life's impact on friendship. Di and Viv and Rose charts the steady but sometimes chaotic progression of these three women's lives and their ultimately enduring bonds. The varied journeys of their lives take their toll on the characters, forcing them apart and stretching their relationships with each other to a near breaking point.

Coward's wit and precision as a modern dramatist is nowhere better exemplified than in this classic modern play from 1930. Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne (originally played by Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward), recently divorced from one another five years previously, arrive coincidentally at the same French hotel. They are honeymooning with their respective new spouses. Encountering one another by chance, each is at once horrified and fascinated by the other. Together they leave for Paris and begin a roundelay of quarrels and love intrigues that culminate in their getting back together.

Man has just set foot on the moon. The streets of Brooklyn are tense. The Irish Mafia is desperately trying to hold on to their power and more importantly their identity. After all, they built these streets. In this edgy new story, relationships between family, friends and enemies are ultimately challenged. Hold tight as Drum Belly casts you into New York Citys deep and dark underworld.

Quiz Show: Welcome to False!, the quiz show where there are no questions, only statements, where every statement is a lie, and where the prize is nothing less than the truth. Everyone's favourite quizmaster, Daniel Caplin, gives tonight's gifted contestants the chance to play for the ultimate prize - to discover what lies behind the Door of Truth. Newcomer Sandra has always been desperate to find out and she's more than a threat to our reigning champion. Tonight, there is even more to play for. Can the show survive what she discovers? Bullet Catch: The high-risk Bullet Catch has claimed many lives since its conception in 1613. Modern-day marvel William Wonder presents a theatre show with magic, mindreading, levitation and, if you dare stay, the most notorious stunt of them all. A unique theatrical experience exploring the world of magic, featuring mind-reading, levitation, and the most notorious finale in show business. One of Scotland's most exciting theatre-makers, Rob Drummond pushes the boundaries of popular culture in these two unique pieces of theatre.

When Gary Maddocks rejoins Mike Evans and his Counter IED Team in Afghanistan he is pleased. He has been finding life back home with Emma dull and is impatient to get back to the job he loves, but had he known what fate had in store for him would he have been so eager? Of course he would, its like an addiction, and if your luck runs out well thats it isnt it? But was it bad luck, faulty kit, or something else? After all Mike has been acting strangely lately and Emma appears to be hiding something. When you step on a pressure plate you think you hear the click, or you think you feel it, but you don't know for sure. And you can't know because what you remember . . . well some of it isn't real.

You don't have to be mad to work here. But it helps. . .When Ready eddie McKenna, soul survivor and double glazing salesman, arrives to reinvigorate St Jude's defunct hospital radio station, he turns more than the ramshackle station upside down. The whisky-drinking wannabe DJ meets his match among patients who include the 19-year-old bipolar Campbell; the schizophrenic, electronic genius Fergus; the obsessive compulsive Rosalie and the elusive, self-harming Francine. Fighting against mental illness and perceptions of those with mental health problems, eddie and the patients of St Jude's strive for their dreams in a struggle to be accepted and celebrated for who they are and what they might be. Hope and joy in the fragile power and beauty of the human heart wash over Donna Franceschild's hilarious and heartfelt adaptation of her own classic 90s TV series set in Glasgow. Features a fantastic R&B soundtrack including Soul Man, Rainy Night in Georgia and Can't Get Next To You.

Thrilling, enigmatic, destructive, Heather Gardner brings to life one of Ibsen's most irresistible heroines in a fresh and stylish new version. It's September 1962. Beautiful socialite Heather returns from her honeymoon to her dream home in Edgbaston where Neville Chamberlain once lived  but nothing is turning out as planned. Heather soon finds herself on a spiral of self-destruction, caught between her old flame Alistair Lambart and the clutches of the predatory solicitor Peregrine Brand. There can be only one outcome.

The inept and accident prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on bringing an ambitious 1920's murder mystery (Murder at Haversham Manor) to The Edinburgh Festival. Chris the arrogant head of the Drama society has directed the piece and cast himself as the dynamic Inspector. Desperate wannabe actress Sandra and the genuinely doting Max struggle opposite each other as the romantic interest while hapless Dennis still can't pronounce 'facade'. An hour of hilarious disaster ensues; actors get knocked out, the play gets stuck on a loop and the set falls down before the final denouement. The production ends with an uproarious, totally improvised Q&A session with the cast, where the audience can put their own questions to the unfortunate troupe.

In Tel Aviv, Israel, a group of Filipino immigrants work as live-in care-givers for elderly Orthodox Jewish men. Six days a week they provide dedicated support to their employers. But on the seventh day they transform into a homespun, sassy musical drag act. Meet the Paper Dolls! An extraordinary true story exploring an unlikely collision of cultures and the universal desire to find "home"

Twenty-five year-old east Belfast man Stevie meets forty-nine year-old Glaswegian widow Martha while recovering from a painful breakup with his ex-girlfriend. Stevie and Martha are immediately attracted to each other. Although their relationship is based entirely upon sexual attraction, they find themselves falling in love. This challenges the expectations of Stevies conservative Christian mother and his ultra-Unionist, Ulster-Scots-speaking sister who work hard to break the pair up. Stevie and Martha must decide if their relationship has a real future and if they can both overcome the pain of their heartbroken pasts. While primarily a hilarious comedy, Cant Forget About You touches on deeper themes such as grief, loss, sexual mores, cultural identity, sectarianism, generation, and the question of how Northern Ireland moves on from the politics of the past and faces the future.

Jo and Alex are the perfect professional couple- the ideal modern family. But at the centre of their comfortable lives a void has opened and Jo is desperate to find a solution. Her unorthodox search leads her to Gloria. Can Gloria help? Or is that not her aim at all?

The story begins in Nigeria where the character of Dele plays a last game of football with his friends and says goodbye to his son Chidi, telling him he will send for him. He then embarks on a voyage where he meets strangers along the way carrying their own stories of upheaval, struggle and hope - sharing his dream to make their home in a new city and be joined by their families. Deles journey melds with the present day. In an inner-city hostel, Dele is an old man being looked after by Tian Mey, his carer. He reflects the past and his journey to where he is now and his story intertwines with the other migrants, both in his memories of the journey and the present-day reality of the hostel. Based on the illustrated novel by Oscar winner Shaun Tan, one mans tale echoes the many arrivals happening around us all the time. This epic migration story unfolds through an extraordinary weaving together of theatre, circus and music. The Arrival tells the age-old story of immigration that is universal across peoples of diverse histories, countries and cultures.

Thatcher's Britain  Brixton, 1981. As tensions mount on the streets, in the safety of their home, a group of Oxford University graduates barely notice what's happening on the streets outside as police and rioters clash, shops are looted, and buildings are set on fire. In both worlds there is a fight for rights... a fight for respect ... a fight for control. Who will win? Who will lose? Who will make the strongest cocktail? And when the dust finally settles the question remains... Will things ever change?

As the financial world issues its shock treatment, what happens when the City's agenda is taken to its ultimate conclusion? Anders Lustgarten passionately argued new play explodes the ethos of austerity and offers an alternative.

In 1934, the people of Inishman learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No-one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. But Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank and as news of his audacity ripples thorugh his rumour-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order

Disgusted with French society where powdered fops gossip in code and bejewelled coquettes whisper behind fans, poet Alceste embarks on a one-man crusade against fakery, frippery and forked tongues. But could the woman he adores be the worst culprit of them all? And in this rarefied world will his revolution prove merely revolting? Considered by many to be Molières best work, The Misanthrope was first performed in 1666 in Paris by the Kings Players. Following the huge successes of Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac master wordsmith Roger McGough once again dips his quill into a Molière classic in this mockery of manners and morals set amid seventeenth-century French aristocracy and written in verse.