Search results for ""author zoe cooper""

Nativities is a darkly comic new play set in the wasteland of petty office politics, designated smoking areas and personal alienation. Excited about her new job as administrative assistant at a call centre, Stella is eager to fit in with her workmates and they seem to like her too, especially when they find out how much they all have in common. It's really like a family at Scion Communications so when they discover that Stella is pregnant they're all delighted for her. However, as her pregnancy progresses, their certainties about love, relationships and parenthood are questioned and their lives both at work and at home begin to unravel. Set somewhere between an Orwellian dystopian vision and an all too familiar contemporary reality, Cooper's writing turns a lens on everyday office life and how personalities are warped in its liminal space. Within the repeating motifs of the anonymity of the corporate existence, recurrent unvaried routines and ominously authoritative performance targets, the core of the play focuses on the sheer isolation and loneliness of the characters. The dialogue is overlapping, misunderstood and disconnected, and the characters are unable to communicate in spite of spending the majority of their waking lives together. This kaleidoscopic dialogue and the slippery, shifting ground between the characters effectively creates a new language for the stage which is startlingly original. This is writing which is innovative, relevant, chilling and blackly funny.

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'I'm the one who's left behind. I'm the one to tell the tale. I knew them both, knew how they lived and how she died.' Ella Grey and her friends are ordinary kids from ordinary families in an ordinary world. They fall in and out of love, play music, stare at the stars, yearn for excitement, and have parties on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland. One day a stranger – a musician called Orpheus – appears on the beach, entrancing them all, but particularly Ella. Where have they come from and what path will Ella follow? A Song for Ella Grey is a version of the myth of Orpheus that sings of the madness of youth, the ache of love, and the near-impossibility of grasping death. Zoe Cooper's stage adaptation of David Almond's award-winning novel was first produced in 2024 by Pilot Theatre, in association with Northern Stage and York Theatre Royal. This edition includes the full text of the play along with a range of teaching materials and resources designed to help educators bring the play to life for their students. Praise for the novel: 'Infused with lyricism and with the fire and oddness of adolescence. Fresh, involving and lucid, it is a song in itself and teens will find it fills them with poignant longing and joy' Telegraph 'The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold against a wild Northumbrian landscape: life, death, love and myths. Just wonderful' Bookseller 'Extraordinary' Metro 'Spell-binding… impossible to resist' Herald

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'Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of any sort of… disappointed love.' Catherine Morland knows little of the world, but who needs real-life experience when you have novels to guide you? Seizing her chance to escape her claustrophobic family and join the smart set in Bath, she meets worldly, sophisticated Isabella Thorpe – Iz, to her friends – and so Cath's very own adventure begins. This playful and surprising reimagining of Northanger Abbey is infused with the spirit of Jane Austen's original novel and fizzes with imagination and humour. It was premiered in 2024 at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, before touring to Octagon Theatre, Bolton, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and Theatre by the Lake, Keswick.

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