Plays, playscripts, drama

Book SynopsisThings don''t change no matter how much you want them to. You try, you run away, you make things new but they''re not. It''s just the same old shit covered in lipstick.Maud, a woman on the run from her damaged past, has sheltered Cynthia from the outside world for the last few years. But while Cynthia is a recluse, living for their dressing-up box, their fairy tales and Shirley Bassey on YouTube, Maud meets Dennis, a security guard at her office. As Cynthia clings, Maud begins to dream of escaping their isolated and claustrophobic world. Annie Jenkins'' debut play In Lipstick gives savage, funny and heartfelt voice to two women trapped in a fractured city, not quite knowing how to love each other.

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Book SynopsisIn this radical new version of Peer Gynt, David Hare kidnaps Henrik Ibsen's most famous hero and runs away with him into the twenty-first century.Stripped of fretwork and greenery, the play is projected into a freewheeling modern world of music, dance, poetry, weddings, coronations, trolls and two-headed children as Peter steals a bride and embarks on an extraordinary lifetime's journey before returning home, finally, to Scotland.David Hare's Peter Gynt posits the same fundamental question the great Norwegian asked in 1867: does a belief in individualism help or hinder us in trying to live purposefully in the present day?The play opens at the National Theatre in July 2019 and transfers to the Festival Theatre Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh International Festival.

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Book Synopsis- And your husband forgave you. But what did you do? Decided that forgiveness was offensive and walked out on your marriage. With nothing. Into nothing.- Into everything, I think.It's 1959. Robert leaves Ibsen's A Doll's House outraged by its attack on the sanctity of marriage; his wife Daisy dashes round to the stage door, in love with both Nora and the actress who plays her, thrilled by their promise of escape.Daisy is at the crossroads. Her moral compass tells her to go one way, society the other. What she chooses to do next will have consequences not just for her and Robert, but for four couples who come after them over ninety years.The truth is we have to give up parts of ourselves if we want to be with someone. And what if, before you know this, you run away from the wrong person?Samuel Adamson's Wife premiered at Kiln Theatre, London, in May 2019.

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Book SynopsisYou should know: I sing at parties, I wear colourful dresses, I am headstrong, I won't wear my hair up because you say I should, or do this because you prefer it, in fact I might do the other just to be contrary, but I am utterly and always myself.The Duchess is a young widow. And with money, sexual freedom and youth, she''s a threat to the status quo; she could get to determine her own life. Terrified by her sudden power and its implications, her brothers Ferdinand and The Cardinal seek to block The Duchess's desires and to dismantle her authority and spirit by any means at their disposal. The results are horrifying, with bloody vengeance from the most unexpected of sources.The Duchess (of Malfi), Zinnie Harris''s radical take on Webster''s great revenge tragedy, premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in May 2019.

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Book SynopsisHansard; nounThe official report of all parliamentary debates.It's a summer's morning in 1988 and Tory politician Robin Hesketh has returned home to the idyllic Cotswold house he shares with his wife of 30 years, Diana. But all is not as blissful as it seems. Diana has a stinking hangover, a fox is destroying the garden, and secrets are being dug up all over the place. As the day draws on, what starts as gentle ribbing and the familiar rhythms of marital sparring quickly turns to blood-sport.A witty and devastating new play.Hansard premiered at the National Theatre, London, in August 2019.

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Book SynopsisAbove all don''t use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science.Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness?This is ''the hard problem'' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry.Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard premiered at the National Theatre, London, in January 2015.

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Book SynopsisLove is just sex. And sex is just chance. And chance is just timing. And free will.Come onIt beats swiping right.When B spills coffee down A's shirt, an old spark is rekindled. But in a world of infinite possibilities, monogamy is tough. Straight, gay, casual, polyamorous, they find themselves irresistibly drawn both to the new and to each other. In a relationship of ever-changing boundaries, the couple question anything and everything as they attempt to navigate modern love.Funny, smart and sexy, Ruby Thomas' debut play probes contemporary ideas about sexuality, gender and the need to connect, before we die.

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Book SynopsisRussia, late summer at the close of the nineteenth century. Vanya and his niece Sonya have worked for years to manage the country estate. Into this ordered and regular household come two new visitors, Sonya''s father, an irritable professor, and his young wife Elena who, in the space of a few months, cause chaos, one by their selfishness, and the other by their sexual allure. Between them, they manage to have most of the inhabitants questioning their purpose in life, their happiness and, at times, their sanity.David Hare''s version of Anton Chekhov''s Uncle Vanya opens at Theatre Royal Bath in July 2019.

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Book SynopsisPolly Stenham's explosive That Face, written at the age of nineteen, was staged at the Royal Court before transferring to London's West End. In every respect this is a remarkable and unforgettable piece of theatre.' Daily TelegraphTusk Tusk'A cracking confirmation of Stenham's talent...

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Book SynopsisWritten in French in the late forties before Waiting for Godot, Eleutheria is about a young man at odds with his middle-class family, living alone in a bedsit and refusing to take part in ''normal'' life while accepting handouts from his mother. Often richly comic, it contains elements of high farce and draws on the traditions of French boulevard comedy and melodrama.This new edition includes the notice by Jérôme Lindon, in its original French, which accompanied the first edition in 1995, explaining the circumstances under which the play was first published.

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Book SynopsisWe've got no money but we're still in Waitrose twice a day.Because going to Tesco just makes life not even worth living.Viv has lost a shoe. They're her work shoes, her weekend shoes, her only pair of shoes, and she doesn't know what to do. The curtains are falling, her foot is bleeding, and she's starting to feel a little overwhelmed. But all will be well once she finds that missing shoe.Funny, unnerving and precise, E. V. Crowe's Shoe Lady premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2020.

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Book SynopsisYou're only the greatest person ever invented and he's some boy who's probs never had a conversation with a side of the sun before but like Let's Be Modest About It Tosh and Lou. 22 scenes.Other friends have come, got boyfriends and gone. So what? Tosh and Lou have each other. They'll never be like the other girls. They won''t sit in a narrative someone else thought up.This is love. This is enough. This is enough. Scenes with girls by Miriam Battye premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2020.

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Book SynopsisThey're going to kill you. They're going to worship you, don't get me wrong. But they are going to kill you.Playboy Sandro Botticelli has it all: talent, fame, good looks. He also has the ear and the wife of Lorenzo de Medici, as well as the Florence''s hottest young apprentice, Leonardo.But whilst he is at work on his breakthrough commission, The Birth of Venus, Botticelli's devotion to pleasure and beauty is put to the ultimate test. As plague sweeps through the city, the charismatic friar Girolamo Savonarola starts to stoke the fires of dissent against the liberal elite. Botticelli finds the life he knows breaking apart, forcing him to choose between love and survival.Jordan Tannahill's hot-blooded queering of Renaissance Italy questions how much of ourselves we are willing to sacrifice when society comes off the rails.WINNER: Best New Play, Toronto Theatre Critics Award WINNER: Governor General''s Literary Award <

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Book SynopsisAlone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest questions: where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.''I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable. It makeTrade Review'I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays with ideas, concepts, abstractions andrelationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulatingthe ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable.It makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do. It is also very funny,utterly compelling and marvellously human.' - Simon McBurney'[An] ambitious and stimulating piece.' - Financial Times'Tackles what it means to be human at a time when advances in technologyand scientific research are hurtling forward with unprecedented speed.' - British Theatre Guide

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Book SynopsisA genius with language, but convinced of his own ugliness, Cyrano secretly loves the radiant Roxane. While Roxane is in love with the beautiful but inarticulate Christian.Cyrano's generous offer to act as go-between sets in motion a poignant and often hilarious love-triangle, in which each character is torn between the lure of physical attraction and the seductive power of words.Martin Crimp's adaptation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac premiered at the Playhouse Theatre, London, in November 2019.

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Book Synopsislead deez boys right off deez streetsuh violencestreets uh angerlead deez boys on to dat promised landInspired by Waiting for Godot and the Book of Exodus, Antoinette Nwandu fuses poetry, humour and humanity in a rare and politically charged play that exposes the experiences of young Black men in a world that refuses to see them.Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu received its UK premiere at Kiln Theatre, London, 2020.A searing fusion of politics and poetry: playful, unsettling, blazingly angry and desperately sad.' FINANCIAL TIMES''Theatre for the heart and head, reinventing and complicating old stories to make them newly and fiercely relevant.'' GUARDIAN''Powerful scarcely begins to describe the impact of this play. It has a devastating force and a poeticism that dazzles.'' THE TIMES

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Book SynopsisFor forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm and intimidation.Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City's workers, he created parks, bridges and 627 miles of expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. But in the 1950s, groups of citizens began to organize against his schemes and against the motor car, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city should be.David Hare's blazing account of a man played by Ralph Fiennes whose iron will exposed the weakness of democracy in the face of charismatic conviction, premieres at the Bridge Theatre, London, in March 2022.

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Book SynopsisThis place is about to blow.A violent storm sweeps the coast. Diana Stuckley and her daughter are struggling to keep the roof on their run-down manor house, when neighbours and strangers begin to appear on their doorstep, seeking shelter from the floods.One of these unexpected arrivals is Ted Farrier, the charismatic leader of a right-wing organisation: he could be Diana's saviour or could pull the fragile household to pieces.Stranded together, this explosive mix of people must survive the weather, and each other.Manor by Moira Buffini premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2021.

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Book SynopsisThis hex has festered,iss roots have been stuckfor almost three decades.I've been obliviousbut now I know.Thuh Lord has made it known.I can't ignore it now iss known.Gotta battle.Gotta fight.Kayode has been unemployed for seven years.

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Book SynopsisAre you really surprised to discover that a woman might have a mind of her own?When Lélio thinks he can ditch and cash in on the rich woman he has promised to marry, in order to become the husband of an even wealthier girl from Paris', he enlists the help of his attractive new friend, the Chevalier.What he doesn't know is that the Chevalier is none other than this same girl from Paris' disguised as a man, and that her project is to publicly expose the depths of his sexual cynicism.A self-declared modern', Marivaux is a pioneer in the exploration of human feeling, asking in this play not only what do we hide from others? - but what are we hiding from ourselves?Martin Crimp's version of Pierre Marivaux's The False Servant received its premiere at the National Theatre, London, in 2004 and was revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, in June 2022. Marivaux's scepticism, irony and fascination with money and sex make him seem peculi

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Book SynopsisSo what have you got against gobby women running restaurants?El Barco is the newest tapas restaurant in fashionable Walthamstow Village, and it's Kerry Jackson's pride and joy.Wearing her working-class roots as a badge of honour, Kerry must navigate the local characters in a bid to make the business a success, without losing herself in the process.This biting comedy from April De Angelis premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2022.

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Book SynopsisThis is bout those menwho stripped him of his crown,treated that charcoal skin like concrete.Peace will only comewhen I make em come undone.

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Book Synopsisthey reveal their depression and fears, they mourn lost friends and even watch a dance performance, as the world outside sputters out of control, amidst anger, illness, and a coming election.With an introduction and afterword by the author.

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Book SynopsisMoscow, 1987. As the cold war begins to thaw, an extraordinary reunion takes place between one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, and his old MI6 boss, the notorious Soviet spy, Kim Philby. It's taken thirty years and the beginnings of a new world order.As the two men raise their vodka glasses under the watchful eye of Philby's last wife, Rufa, Ben Brown's compelling political drama asks whether Philby betrayed his friend as well as his country, and how much the writer of The Third Man knew about Philby's secret life.A Splinter of Ice was filmed on stage at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, for release online in April 2021, before a UK tour.

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Book SynopsisYou used to swing me on our garden gate. In and out, in and out out and in, me, on top of the gate, safe because I was in your arms, my father's big strong arms.Recalling events that may or may not have happened, people he may or may not have known, an elderly father weaves his life, funny, angry, poignant, as if in a dream.His daughter, perched outside his window, as close as the pandemic allows, responds with conflicting memories. They sing and argue, they broach dangerous ground, their profound love apparent despite themselves, until the visiting hour is up.Written during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, Frank McGuinness's The Visiting Hour premiered in April 2021 at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in the first online Gate At Home production.

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Book SynopsisAnd the Internet has democratised overly. But you know what? People love hierarchy. It infuriates them but it makes them horny. It's gold dust.Anna. 25. Curator. I ? art, fashion, NYC. Ariel. 32. CEO @Genesis. A dating app by invite only. SF-NYC-LDN.It's all about concept, and it's so easy. Anna and Ariel, they make the world. They curate and create and know what people want. The fashionistas, the art scene, the elite party circuit. Outsiders who infiltrate, who influence, who dazzle. Appearance is everything. And then it isn't. And there's a price to pay.A story about narcissism inspired by real events, Joseph Charlton''s Anna X premiered at the VAULT Festival, 2019, and transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, in July 2021.

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Book SynopsisSometimes you crack.Sometimes you didn't mean to yell that.Sometimes you have to lay low until you've figured it outAnd sometimes, sometimes you have to hibernate until you've healed.This is a new day.Shedding a Skin is a story for our times. It's a play about finding kindness in unexpected places; about understanding what our elders can teach us; it's new skin honouring old. It's a play about joy, healing and protest.Amanda Wilkin's Shedding a Skin is the 2020 winner of Soho Theatre's acclaimed Verity Bargate Award. The play premiered at Soho Theatre, London, in June 2021.

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Book SynopsisUnderwood Lane the winter sun hangs like a suppurating boil glued to a giant sheet of dirty asbestos above the blackened tenements that rear up from the cobbled street like a row of broken teeth...Brilliantly funny and packed with iconic songs from the early Sixties, this is a new musical play from the writer of the classic Scottish masterpiece, The Slab Boys Trilogy. Telling the tale of a young skiffle band trying to make it, Underwood Lane has it all: style, fierce love rivalry, broken hearts, dodgy dealers, religion, sex and death. It is written in memory of the author's Paisley buddy, Gerry Rafferty, who was born and brought up on the titular street.John Byrne''s Underwood Lane premiered in a co-production between Tron Theatre Company and OneRen with support from Renfrewshire Council''s Future Paisley Programme. The play opened at Johnstone Town Hall, Johnstone, and transferred to the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, in July 2022.

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Book SynopsisI''m a killer I told youI told you that all alongYou were the dummy to believeI could ever be anything elseTwo teenagers fall in love on Long Island. There's fun and dancing, sports and team spirit, there's the woods and beer and physical hard work. But it's 1938, the world is on the brink of war, and their wholesome summer camp is exclusively for American youth of German descent. As their mutual attraction deepens, so they become intoxicated by the Nazi ideology that fuels the camp, an ideology that will culminate in global atrocity and genocide.Inspired by the real Camp Siegfried, Bess Wohl's play premiered at the Old Vic Theatre, London, in September 2021.

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Book SynopsisI NeanderthalPrince of the PlainsI saw EdenIt wasn't muchI sawThe treeThe gatesRustyBut stillIntactI sawThe triple lockThe jack bootThe size of an oakI retreatedWiselyGod they WereUgly Marina Carr's iGirl premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in October 2021.

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Book SynopsisYou'd be surprised how a simple thing like locking up your husband in the same room as you, makes you aware of something. Of being alive.The Scent of Roses begins with a wife who takes her husband hostage in order to have an honest conversation. This simple, transgressive act, and her demand for a straight answer, sparks a chain of conversations, interrogations, obfuscations and revelations, as they and those around them try to discover what is real and who they can trust in a post-truth world.Zinnie Harris's The Scent of Roses premieres at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in February 2022.

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Book SynopsisI feel so fucking sillybut I thought they meant real peacefucking hell KateyI thought they meant that even my bodyit might stopbreakingNorthern Ireland, 1998. The Good Friday Agreement has just been signed, and politicians are shaking hands and declaring peace in our time. Away from all that spectacle, Kate receives an urgent phone call. As she travels to the coastal town of Portbenoney to confront an old lover, dark memories of their life together rise in her like a river.This is Paradise by Michael John O''Neill speaks in a fierce and powerful voice. With brutal lyricism, it examines the legacy of violence and asks how we can begin to mend in its wake. The play opened at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2022.

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Book SynopsisHe can't help himself and he plunges into the forest until the moment it dawns on him: night has fallen and he is completely lost.Pierre finds himself at a turning point, tormented by the conflicting demands of family, career and sexual desire. His struggle to resolve this crisis, without fracturing his marriage or compromising his comfortable way of life, is explored in original and unsettling ways.Florian Zeller's raw and mysterious play, translated by Christopher Hampton, premieres at Hampstead Theatre, London, in February 2022. I'm telling you a story, if that's all right by you. Apparently you've no objection to telling stories yourself. Am I right?

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Book SynopsisI board a plane marked with the swastika and take the noon postal service flight from Stockholm to Berlin. In the final days of World War II, a secret meeting takes place between a member of the World Jewish Congress and one of the most powerful Nazis in Germany - without the knowledge of the FÃhrer. Dr Felix Kersten, Himmler's trusted personal physiotherapist, uses his unique position of influence to facilitate a meeting between the architect of the Holocaust and Swedish Jew Norbert Masur. A meeting which could turn Himmler's thoughts away from the fading FÃhrer and towards a course of action that could save thousands of lives.With battle lines crumbling and lives in the balance, the two men must try to find a way to persuade Himmler to release the last surviving concentration camp prisoners contrary to Hitler's orders that no Jew should outlast the regime.Based on a remarkable true story, Ben Brown's The End of the Night opened at The Park, London, in

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Book SynopsisI'm just very very horny.I don't know how else to put it.Saoirse Murphy moves from one chaotic world to another. From her Catholic school in Dublin to a new exciting life in London. She's had a taste of freedom and she's making the most of it; but underneath it all she's struggling to manage big secrets, and there's only one person she can talk to.Sarah Hanly's Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in October 2021. It is co-produced by the Royal Court Theatre, London, and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Her monologue Shower was staged at the Abbey as part of the Dear Ireland series, 2020. She was awarded the 2019 Pinter Commission.

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Book SynopsisI wish there could be a day where families came together and just said it all to each other. Because then everyone would know it all, and there'd be nothing left to hurt anyone.Sussex. London. Wiltshire. Northamptonshire. Wales. Over three decades, a family spreads across the country, and the chord they made together starts to fray, the distance between them changing the music of their lives.Barney Norris's We Started to Sing is a love song to the people who raised him, and a hymn to the bravery of our brief lives. The play premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in May 2022.

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Book SynopsisApril de Angelis's second collection covers six plays written between 2011 and 2021, including the previously unpublished short play Rune and her first musical, Gin Craze!

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Book SynopsisPlay something kitty-cat-ish . . . sweet. Imagine I've died and you're galloping through fields.As their thirtieth wedding anniversary approaches, Alice and Edgar are locked in a bitter struggle. They've driven away their children and their friends. Their relationship is sustained by taunts and recriminations. When a newcomer breaks into the midst of the fray, their insular lives threaten to spin out of control.We''re all just bodies and when we''re dead we''re worm food, but as long as your body keep going, flailing or thrashing about, we are duty bound to fight, to scratch and kick, until you''re fucked. That''s my philosophy. Laced with biting humour, The Dance of Death is August Strindberg's landmark drama about a marriage pushed to its limits, adapted in a thrilling new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The Dance of Death opened at the Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Theatre in May 2022 before going on UK tour in an Arcola T

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Book SynopsisLet others sing of war and a hero buffeted by fate. I sing of marriage and a marriage bed, and the endurance of love.With an introduction by the author, this is Tom Stoppard in the voice of Odysseus's wife recalling how the Trojan War ''took away my husband for ten years, and ten more coming the long way home'', and Odysseus''s dramatic arrival back on Ithaca.Weaving Homeric tropes with the wry wit of a woman of our time, Penelope tells this still vibrant love story from the oldest poem in Western literature.

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Book SynopsisThey won''t even know we won this game. Only you and I will know that we Topped Their Love.Love has no limits for the Diggs siblings: there''s nothing that seventeen-year-old Jude won''t do to keep her younger brother Acton safe. Growing up in the turbulence of 1970s America, Jude works nights and weekends to pay the bills, just so that they can stay together with their mother. But when Acton''s troublesome pals form a club in their basement, a foolish game threatens to upend Jude''s plans and derail their lives forever. Jude will do anything to protect her brother, but someone may have to pay the price. As trust and loyalty are put on the line, hindsight proves devastating in Naomi Wallace''s riveting drama. The Breach opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in May 2022.

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Book SynopsisWhen they called saying your body had been found, I had one immediate thought. I remember thinking that maybe now I'd be free.Sam hasn't spoken to her mother Kath for three years when she learns that she's been found dead in the New Mexico desert.Travelling to the small town of Taos to identify the body, she discovers Kath had become embroiled in a shadowy enterprise, offering Sam an unimaginable chance to rebuild their broken relationship. But to do so, she must decide whether she can finish what her mother started.David Farr's compelling new play is both an unsettling science fiction and an intimate study of loss and bereavement, examining how artificial intelligence could alter our understanding of death, consciousness and the soul.A Dead Body in Taos opened at the Bristol Old Vic in September 2022.

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Book SynopsisIf the politicians cannot save Russia, then we businessmen must. We have not just the responsibility but the duty to become Russian heroes.1991. The Fall of the Soviet Union.With the dawning of a new Russia, there are winners and losers, and today's patriot can fast become tomorrow's traitor.As a new generation of oligarchs fights to seize control, we follow billionaire businessman Boris Berezovsky the kingmaker' behind Vladimir Putin from the president''s inner circle to public enemy number one, in this unflinching story of ambition and the dangers of loyalty and love.Peter Morgan's Patriots opened at the Almeida Theatre, London, in July 2022.

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Book SynopsisA contemporary thriller with ancient roots, by the winner of the Most Promising New Playwright 2024 award (OffWestEnd). The bark creeps up my body like a rising sea level. I wonder what will happen when it reaches my heart.When a woman tells a lie to her girlfriend, a seed is planted that grows in the darkness. Now roots are cracking through the pavement and branches are coming in at the windows. As she starts to see things that no one else can, she becomes the focus of some seriously unwanted attention.A queer urban fable about passion, power and photosynthesis, Rafaella Marcus''s Sap, her first full-length stage play, opened at Roundabout @ Summerhall, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in August 2022.''A glorious tapesty of a play.'' GuardianWinner: Summerhall Lustrum Award Winner: SoHo Playhouse Medal of Excellence

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Book SynopsisI've given up on fighting for change.That's a strange, imperfect illusion that allowed confusion to reign in my life.I took a knife to its neck and sliced it open.When a passionate activist, Wunmi, is invited into a middle-class Black family's home, a fire is lit. The family members have always seen themselves as pillars of society: they are charity workers, therapists and politicians. But as they begin to realise what Wunmi really represents, their certainty begins to crumble, the tension rises and a suffocating ash starts to fill the air. Full of forensic fury and incandescent poetry, Dipo Baruwa-Etti's fiercely political new play opened at the Almeida Theatre, London, in September 2022.

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Book SynopsisI still play to their chords.Livin within conventions.Livin within restrictions.Livin within a structure.Lettin someone write my narrative.Toye is preparing for his piano exam to get into a prestigious music school. He''s doing it for the contacts, the opportunity, the love of art. But when he notices the lack of Black British history in his school''s curriculum, he begins to question himself and the world around him. Toye wants to follow his dream. but he can''t let these institutions write his story. He decides to teach his classmates about Black cultural icons himself, but quickly discovers that not everyone wants Black history to be celebrated.Dipo Baruwa-Etti''s inspiring new play about the pressures of being young, gifted and ready to change the world premiered at Roundabout in Kingston, in a Paines Plough and Rose Theatre production, in July 2022.

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Book SynopsisI've spent a lifetime in the ebb and flow of powerIt brings its giftsBut then it's an intoxicantOne must beware lest one consumes too muchThe monarch.Her most powerful subject.Two women meet once a week for eleven years. One believes there is no such thing as society. The other has vowed to serve it.Moira Buffini's wickedly funny hit comedy imagines what the world's most powerful women, Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II, talked about behind closed palace doors.Winner of the 2014 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, Handbagged was first performed in September 2013 and returned to Kiln Theatre, London, in September 2022.A phenomenon.' Sunday TelegraphPerfectly pitched between the comic and the serious.' Guardian

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