Search results for ""Author Kieran Hurley""

Multi-award-winning Scottish playwright Kieran Hurley has been making waves since the early 2010s with his vivid storytelling and searing honesty, creating plays acutely concerned with society and community, and deeply enmeshed in Scotland's local political context. Tracking the evolution of Hurley's work from his early solo shows to his later large-cast plays and featuring an introduction by Scottish theatre critic Joyce McMillan, this is an exciting collection showcasing one of the UK's most exciting creators of politically-engaged theatre. The plays collected are: Hitch (2010): a previously unpublished solo show about Hurley's hitchhiking trip to the 2009 G8 meeting in L'Aquila, exploring the meaning of political protest. Beats (2012): a coming-of-age story exploring the aftermath of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act outlawing raves. It was adapted into a film in 2019, garnering nominations for BIFA Best Debut Screenplay and WGGB Best Screenplay. Heads Up (2016): a ferocious piece of storytelling asking what we would do if we found ourselves at the end of our world as we know it. (Winner of the Fringe First Award 2016.) Mouthpiece (2018): an unflinching Edinburgh-centric two-hander which examines whether it's possible to tell someone else's story without exploiting them along the way. (Winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award 2019.) The Enemy (2021): a provocative and timely drama offering a uniquely Scottish take on Henrik Ibsen's timeless work An Enemy of the People.

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Salisbury Crags, Edinburgh. Twilight. A woman takes a step forward into the air. A teenage boy pulls her back. Two lives are changed forever. Libby whiles away her days in New Town cafes and still calls herself a writer – but she’s not put pen to page for years. Declan is a talented young artist struggling with a volatile home life in Pilton. As they form an uneasy friendship, complicated by class and culture, Libby spots an opportunity to put herself back on track, and really make a difference. She needs Declan’s story. In all its messy, painful detail. But does she have the right to it? When does poverty portrayal become poverty porn? Often startling, sometimes shocking and threaded with unexpected humour, Mouthpiece takes a frank and unflinching look at the different Edinburghs which often exist in ignorance of one another, and examines whether it’s possible to tell someone else’s story without exploiting them along the way.

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Everyone always grows up thinking it’s the end of the world. The only difference with you lot is you think it makes you special. A black comedy that is by turns explosive and tender, Adults follows acclaimed playwright Kieran Hurley’s TravFest19 smash-hit Mouthpiece. Amongst a raft of anonymous Airbnbs in Edinburgh, thirty-something Zara is running her own business and trying to make her way in the world. A new client has just arrived, but her colleague is running late. Tensions are high. Also, the business is a brothel, the client is her old teacher, and her colleague is having an existential panic attack about growing up. They’re all convinced that they’re the most hard done by, and that the mess of a world that’s around them definitely isn’t their fault. But maybe something has to break between them, before anything can really change. Adults is a raw, darkly funny play about alienation, loneliness, growing up, growing old - and the human need for connection, intimacy and acceptance to survive in a world that fails you. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the Traverse Theatre during the Festival, in August 2023.

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Max is a normal-ish kid in a normal-ish town. He spends his days daydreaming and hanging out with his weird wee pal Stevie Nimmo. But when Max is called for his first Square Go, a fight by the school gates, it’s his own demons he must wrestle with first. Featuring an original soundtrack by members of Frightened Rabbit, this unmissable collaboration between Fringe First winning writers Kieran Hurley (Heads Up) and Gary McNair (A Gambler’s Guide to Dying) is a raucous and hilarious new play about playground violence, myths of masculinity and the decision to step up or run.

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