TCG Books

“A nation that devours another will one day devour itself.”

Set when the Great Devouring comes home, England & Son is a kaleidoscopic odyssey, where disaster capitalism, empire, Thatcherite politics, stolen youth and stolen wealth merge into the tale of a working-class boy who just wants his dad to smile at him.

With some deep, dark laughs – and some deep, dark love – England & Son is a one-man play by Ed Edwards, first performed by the celebrated political comedian Mark Thomas.

It was first produced by HOME Manchester and Tin Cat Entertainment, and premiered in Paines Plough's Roundabout during the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, directed by Cressida Brown, where it won a Fringe First Award.

This edition also features an illuminating essay by the author, "Writing the End of Empire".

For Charly, every day is the same. Things used to be different, when there was Clo, but now there isn't Clo, and Charly doesn't want to dwell on that. She just wants to chug coffee, blast Beastie Boys and deal drugs. Simple.

But when Charly suffers a power cut, she's forced back into the real world of knock-off Morrisseys, disapproving mothers and, ultimately, a world she has to navigate alone.

Lady Dealer is a mile-a-minute, one-person poem play by Martha Watson Allpress about forgiveness, the exhaustion of trying, and mistaking self-destruction for self-preservation.

It premiered in Paines Plough's Roundabout during the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

A new book that provides actors and theatremakers with innovative methods for approaching the concept of space in theatrical performance.

In his bestselling book The Actor and the Target, Declan Donnellan laid out a fresh and radical approach to acting that has inspired actors around the world. Now, in The Actor and the Space, he develops and extends those ideas, exploring that most profound source of vitality in life as well as performance: the space around us.

Tackling fundamental questions that face any actor—What makes performance better? How do I create a space for my character to live in? How do I tap into that space, and draw energy from it?—Donnellan offers a universal set of keys to unlock the mysteries of performance. Full of insightful precepts, acute psychology and practical, hands-on advice, the book presents a bold new way of thinking about acting, illustrated throughout with line-by-line analysis of scenes from Macbeth to show how it works in rehearsal and performance.

Essential reading for any actor or theatre director, The Actor and the Space is also a fascinating distillation of the work of a world-leading director that will reward and enrich anyone with an interest in theatre.

A bracing poetic reflection on the deadly power of the white imagination from acclaimed writer Cornelius Eady.

This spare and haunting play takes its inspiration from the case of Susan Smith, a white woman who murdered her two young children by strapping them into the back seat of her car and pushing it into a lake. In statements to the police, Smith claimed she had been carjacked by a young Black man. In Brutal Imagination, adapted from his National Book Award-finalist poetry cycle, Eady conjures this imaginary Black man as Mr. Zero, who appears in order to “to get things done” when white people need a scapegoat for the consequences of their own actions. As Smith spins her story into more and more elaborate designs, Mr. Zero begins to rebel against his appointed task, leading Smith, and us, slowly closer to the dark secret at the center of the play. Brutal Imagination implicates not just the small town of Union, South Carolina, but an entire American racial imaginary in which a white woman’s story, no matter how ludicrous, is always believed if it implicates a Black man.

An anthology of six new plays written in Arabic, published here in English translation. Including five plays selected from over 500 submissions to Masrah Ensemble’s 2021 Open Call and one by Masrah Ensemble’s former playwright-in-residence, these six texts—by Yasser Abu Shaqra, Arzé Khodr, Rim Mejdi, Wael Qaddur, Nasr Sami, and Leila Tubal—represent a diverse array of voices and styles, and push at the limits of theatrical form and public discourse. The volume features an introduction by theater writer/director/academic Hanan Qassab Hassan along with short introductions to the plays by US-based playwrights Lucas Baisch, Jess Barbagallo, Agnes Borinsky, Nazareth Hassan, Kristen Kosmas, and Haruna Lee.

Ruby by Leila Tubal (Tunisia)

Translated by Hisham Ben Khamsa, with an introduction by Haruna Lee

A rhythmic monologue, lyrical and dark, in which a woman unpacks a life of misogyny and violence as she prepares to meet her daughter for the first time.

Braveheart by Wael Qaddur (Syria)

Translated by Clem Naylor, with an introduction by Lucas Baisch

A play about a group of friends writing a novel together, in which relationships collapse and get rebuilt through the act of writing. How do you move out of a state of war into a time of presumed stability?

Eternity by Rim Mejdi (Morocco)

Translated by Melanie Magidow and Caline Nasrallah, with an introduction by Kristen Kosmas

A young woman is stuck on a train, and just wants to get off. An allegorical knot of a play that moves between liveness and video, vernacular and formal Arabic, with interludes from Rimbaud's French.

Sometimes We Remember by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon)

Translated by Clem Naylor, with an introduction by Nazareth Hassan

A Fornesian diamond of a play that unfolds in a series of seemingly simple domestic and urban scenes, about the lure of dwelling in memories of war.

Dog and Cat Pizza Chapters by Nasr Sami (Tunisia)

Translated by Sam Kimball, with an introduction by Jess Barbagallo

A dizzying trip into a world of violence and distortion, by way of the Biblical Song of Songs. In which cats are nailed to walls, and two lovers seek to become one.

Unsettled by Yasser Abu Shaqra (Palestine/Syria)

Translated by Zeina Halabi, with an introduction by Agnes Borinsky

A Syrian family arrives as refugees in Europe, where life does not resemble what they imagined. Over the course of the play, each member of the family finds themselves backed deeper and deeper into a corner, and “safety” proves a devil’s bargain.

A collection of four stunningly imaginative plays that examine and deconstruct Asian American identity from the acclaimed writer of Cambodian Rock Band. 

With a sharp wit and a gift for the fantastical, Lauren Yee’s plays offer unexpected and often irreverent explorations of cultural identity, family histories, and what it means to find community. In The Great Leap, a hotshot basketball player from San Francisco’s Chinatown talks his way onto a college basketball team, which is set to travel to Beijing for a “friendship” game. When they arrive, however, they find a country in the throes of the late 1980s post-Cultural Revolution era—and a brewing rebellion that will soon test the tolerance of the post-Mao Communist Party.

This collection also includes Ching Chong Chinaman, The Hatmaker’s Wife, and King of the Yees.

In October 2013, Scott Jones was leaving a bar in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, when he was attacked, stabbed in the back, and left paralyzed from the waist down. In the months following his attack, Scott Jones’s story garnered international attention, not only for its brutality, but also for his uncommonly early decision to forgive his attacker. Furiously researching restorative justice practices and success stories, Jones sits down to ask himself the hardest question he’s ever had to answer: Does he have it in him to not just forgive his attacker, but to accept his new life as a disabled man?

Based on the incredible true story, I Forgive You explores the complexities of forgiveness, privilege, recovery, and self-love in Scott’s own words backed by a live children’s choir performing the music of legendary Icelandic band Sigur Rós.

Hailed as the world’s first Deaf musical—told entirely in American Sign Language and Signed Music—The Black Drum revolves around Joan and her journey to healing after the death of her wife, Karen. Since Karen’s passing, Joan has been unable to share her music with the world, anguish snatching her desire to perform. Joan’s grief pulls her into a bizarre, black-and-white world where her two beautiful tattoos come to life as guides and together they confront a monster called the Minister. But the only way to defeat the Minister and begin to heal is for Joan to embrace her own voice.

An epic fantasy about grief and healing, The Black Drum questions the concept of music we are conditioned to believe, suggesting that music is not just something you hear, it is something you see and feel.

Exploring reconciliation and connection through a story that spans seven generations, Frozen River (nîkwatin sîpiy) tells the story of two eleven-year-olds through the eyes of Grandmother Moon. Eilidh and Wâpam are born under the same blood moon, but Eilidh was born in Scotland and Wâpam in Kihci-Manito kâ ayapit, now known as Manitoba. After sailing across the ocean in hopes of a more prosperous life, Eilidh meets Wâpam deep in the forest, and the two become instant friends. Coming from vastly different worlds, Eilidh and Wâpam decide to teach each other about their ways of life. But when a sacred promise between them is broken, the relationship among cultures becomes jeopardized for generations to come.

Frozen River (nîkwatin sîpiy) shows audiences that an openness to learn from those who have protected and honoured the waterways for centuries can lead to healing and reconciliation.

When shy Aaron joins the hotel's inharmonious team, he's faced with emotionally volatile guests, apathetic staff and management that doesn't have a clue. Not to mention the rumour of singing ghosts haunting the corridors.

But through all the madness, one voice stands out, capturing his ears and his heart – and Aaron must go into battle with the hotel's magical chaos to find out the truth.

An uplifting ensemble comedy, Isobel McArthur's The Grand Old Opera House Hotel is a story of art bringing us together in hopeless circumstances, to the tune of some of the most popular opera songs ever written. It premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, during the Festival in August 2023, with Dundee Rep Theatre, directed by Gareth Nicholls. It was the recipient of an Edinburgh Fringe First Award.

Chunkyz Shisha Lounge is a home away from home for Jihad, Rashid and Asif, a space where community whispers are heard, jokes are told, and new hustles are born. But its future is under threat, having become a target for local politicians.

Aspiring journalist Jihad wants to fight back. After winning a competition to produce his own documentary, he sets out to create something that gives a voice to his community and challenges the usual stereotypes that fill the airwaves. Will he be able to create something that makes his boys proud? Or will his dreams of becoming a journalist come at a cost too high to bear?

Mohamed-Zain Dada's debut play, Blue Mist is a story about South Asian Muslim men navigating a system that isn't built for them. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2023, directed by Milli Bhatia, in a co-production with SISTER.

You can call him Cockroach, or Roach for short. He’s a catnip-smoking city slicker living in the dark corners behind the toilet. After diving into the diaper of a Chinese baby, Cockroach watches the boy grow up to lose his sense of identity. Understanding what it means to live in a world not built for outsiders, he attempts to help the boy reclaim his culture. But when the Bard himself makes a surprise appearance in hopes of influencing the boy with the “superior” English language, Cockroach finds himself caught in a collision of linguistics, longing, and lobsters (who sometimes burp).

A unique exploration of xenophobia and the dangers of language erosion, cockroach (曱甴) is a coming-of-age play about the stories we tell ourselves to comfort, to survive, to resist, to overcome, and to be.

The story Charles Dickens might have written after drinking too much gin…

Follow half-orphan Pip's extraordinary exploits with sisters Pippa and Poppy and best friend Harry Biscuit, as they attempt to escape the calculating clutches of the dastardly Mr Gently Benevolent, defeat the hideous Hardthrasher siblings, and deflect disaster at every turn! Will evil be vanquished by virtue? Can love triumph over hate?

Mark Evans' stage play Bleak Expectations is a hilarious, chaotic caper, featuring dastardly villains, preposterous names, pulse-quickening romances, heart-rending death scenes, and definitely, probably, hopefully a happy ending.

Based on the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, the play opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in 2022, directed by Caroline Leslie. It transferred to the Criterion Theatre in London's West End in 2023, where it featured a medley of many well-known actors and comedians.

It offers rich opportunities to amateur theater companies looking for a gloriously daft Dickensian romp which will have their audiences joyfully transported and begging for more.

Helen is forty when she loses her husband. Her daughter Becca is fifteen when her dad dies. Now it's just the two of them... what do they do next?

Unfolding through snapshots of a relationship over forty years, Helen explores the threads which bind mother and daughter together, how they damage each other, and how they come to each other's rescue.

A play for two actors – about love, grief, and getting ashes stuck to your trouser leg – Helen by Maureen Lennon was shortlisted for the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award. It was first produced at Theatre503, London, in May 2023, in a co-production with Terrain, a company dedicated to promoting Northern artists and the stories they tell.

Harry Kondoleon has said his plays are “sad, scary, funny.” Though his work has been compared to that of Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde, John Guare and Christopher Durang, his acute and elegant voice has from the first been distinctively his own.

Kondoleon’s tragicomedies are peopled by extremists, their behavior bizarre. And yet these curious characters are driven by the most familiar of passions. Abandonment and betrayal define their pasts, shadow their present. They are needy and lonely and full of desire. They seek transcendence, and this impossible, fundamental longing takes forms both common and strange.

These plays are not only jet-black comedies. They are fairy tales, fables, passion plays, masquerades. Kondoleon’s intensely theatrical sensibility is, finally, romantic. He sees the contemporary world clearly; he also sees other worlds: prior, within, beyond.

This volume also includes: Christmas on Mars, The Vampires, Slacks and Tops and Anteroom.

“The book flinches like a school of fish, a murmuration, a murder nation, my colonizer's baby handprint on a paneled wall in a farmhouse in Ovid, Michigan. The book unearths burial mounds and flattens them into fields. My ancestors removed the bones, and I removed arrowheads from the creek, and I held them to my heart, and I searched the grass for blood, but all I saw was a starling. She hid her eggs in my chest, and when I drifted to sleep I saw black-winged, nameless shadows.

This is the Book of Lily.”

In Faun, Brandi George explores the sudden erasure of human and nonhuman populations from her hometown of Ovid, Michigan. Embodying various voices, forms, and media, a young girl named Lily undergoes a series of transformations guided by nymphs, flora, and fauna. A reworking of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Faun also reflects on the themes of sexual violence that often occur in the mythic.

Pog sprawls on a couch. Gomey stands by a large globe. Pog sits at the counter. Gomey sits at a table. Two broken lawn chairs, center stage. Pog and Gomey listless in these chairs. Pog and Gomey seated, next to each other, but at different tables. Pog dressed as Punch, or Judy. Gomey dressed as Judy, or Punch. Pog, you know. Gomey, too. In chairs, side by side: Pog and Gomey. Left of center, Pog at a lectern. Right of center, Gomey at a lectern. A post-apocalyptic place, no sign of anyone. Pog dressed in bird mask and long iron sheets. Gomey on stilts. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The audience almost gets up to leave. A smell of popcorn. Pog puts on a big floppy hat. Gomey is sniffling. Pog, a man, barely. Gomey, another man, also barely.

In their collection of collaborative short plays, poets Jon Cone and Rauan Klassnik introduce us to Pog & Gomey—a Waiting for Godot-esque pair for the new millennium. Except our friends aren't waiting for anyone in particular—they might not even be friends. They're just stuck with each other. But the globe keeps spinning. And an audience has come to watch.

“I told you how I blamed you for so much,
your fist blooming into a prismed silence, a spectral call
for quiet, cheering from the chorus as your fist anoints
liquid mercury to my lips, the sign to all that I have
succumbed to your weight, wordless.

Brother, if you called for purple, I would give you amethyst
from my mouth; if blue, water and a sail.”

Guided by Dante, Freud, and a pantheon of other literary and mythical figures, Justin Limoli travels to hell and back in this new play about brotherhood, loss, and what it means to keep writing when all you write about is grief. A stand-alone work as well as a follow-up to Bloodletting in Minor Scales [A Canvas in Arms.], Limoli's latest blurs the intersection of play and poetry even further, creating something both beautiful and wholly unique in the process.

A scorching one-man tour of guilt, privilege, and moral awakening.

First performed by the author himself at the posh apartments of his Hollywood and literary friends, Wallace Shawn’s The Fever is also an unapologetically sharp-edged critique of wealth and privilege. That tension, between the pleasures of affluence and the horrors of capitalism, runs through the play, as its unnamed speaker attempts to overcome the nausea—is it the water or the guilt?—that overwhelms him on a vacation to “a poor country where my language isn’t spoken.” Awakened to the reality of inequality by a copy of Marx’s Capital that mysteriously appears on his doorstep, our narrator surveys a world where Communism has all but disappeared, but the inequality described by Marx in the 19th century has only accelerated. Ashamed of his own complicity in shaping the current landscape, the narrator is nevertheless torn between the comforts of his life and a desire to enact seismic societal change.

Five wildly different women gather in the muddy fields of the Highland Games circuit to compete in the obscure art of Backhold Wrestling. Can bold beginners Imogen, Chantelle, Jo, Pamela and Helen transform themselves into a team and win the championship? Or will their differences sabotage them, and send them face-planting into the mud?

The pearls are off, influencer videos posted and 'Gucci' bags from the Barras Market set aside. This is it. Hold on tight.

A poignant, dynamic exploration of belonging and identity, Nat McCleary's play Thrown opened in 2023 at Victoria Hall, Dunblane, directed by Johnny McKnight, before embarking on a Scottish tour which culminated in a run at the Traverse Theatre, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.

It's 1671, and the charismatic and unpredictable Colonel Blood is planning the greatest heist of all time: stealing – in plain sight – the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

With an audacious plan and a gang of misfits by his side, can he possibly pull it off? And is King Charles II in any mood to have his crown jewels handled?

Based on the scarcely believable true story, Simon Nye's play The Crown Jewels is a riotous and uproarious royal affair. It opened at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End in 2023 before touring, and was directed by Sean Foley with a star-studded cast including Al Murray, Mel Giedroyc, Carrie Hope Fletcher, Aidan McArdle, Neil Morrissey, Joe Thomas and Tanvi Virmani.

It will appeal to any amateur theater company – monarchists and republicans alike – who want to get their hands on a royally funny caper to perform.

When orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live at her uncle's great house on the Yorkshire Moors, she finds it full of secrets. Left to make her own entertainment, Mary stumbles upon a garden, overgrown and locked for years. A forbidden garden.

Finding her way inside, with the help of a friendly robin, Mary begins to feel a connection to the house and its inhabitants. Then, one night, in one of the house's many rooms, she hears the sound of crying...

Frances Hodgson Burnett's delightful and enduring tale celebrates the power of transformation and healing through nature. Elizabeth Newman's magical adaptation was premiered at Pitlochry Festival Theatre's open-air amphitheatre in 2023, where Newman is Artistic Director.

This version will appeal to other professional and amateur companies looking for a much-loved classic that can be easily staged in theatres, outdoor venues – and gardens.

A group of teenagers, their lives shaped by billions of seemingly random events going back to before they were born, come together onstage to share stories about their past, their present, and what might lie ahead.

When This Is Over is a uniquely personal, theatrical celebration of hope, possibility and imagination. It's about how we can work with chaos, and embrace our collective imagination as we prepare for a deeply uncertain future – together.

Originally conceived by Company Three – and developed alongside more than fifty other youth theatres across the UK – When This Is Over is a play designed to be created and performed by teenage casts, drawing directly on their own life experiences and the stories they want to tell. As with Company Three's widely performed youth-theatre play Brainstorm, the script is a blueprint for an amazing theatrical adventure.

This published edition contains a series of exercises and activities for schools, youth-theatre groups and community companies to create and perform their own unique productions, and also features the complete script of Company Three's version, which was performed at The Yard, London, in 2022.

When This Is Over was named Community Project of the Year at The Stage Awards, and Outstanding Drama Initiative at the Music and Drama Education Awards.

Two couples each invite a stranger into their homes in the hope of sparking new life. Instead, they find themselves threatened by invasion, alienation and abduction…

Louis Emmitt-Stern's uncanny and razor-sharp sci-fi comedy-drama I Fucked You in My Spaceship received a sold-out premiere at VAULT Festival 2023, winning the Origins Award for Outstanding New Work. It subsequently transferred to Soho Theatre, London.

The play is also available (in an earlier version) in the volume Plays from VAULT 6.

Years and years ago, Hope disappeared. Now, she's back. To find something she left behind.

But in the People's Republic of Koka Kola – a world of dwindling resources, corruption and corporate giants – what happens to Hope?

A surreal and frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country, Tom Fowler's play Hope has a Happy Meal premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2023, directed by Lucy Morrison, in a co-production with SISTER.

Dan is a carpenter. A Geordie through and through. He had a heart attack recently, but he's on the mend now.

Katie has just arrived from London. She's finally got a council flat, somewhere for her and her daughter, Daisy. A fresh start.

In adversity, people come together. But when the system is stacked against you, how does anyone get by? With 14.5 million people (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2022 Poverty Report) living in poverty in the UK, this is not fiction. It is reality.

I, Daniel Blake was originally a film – directed by Ken Loach, written by Paul Laverty and produced by Rebecca O'Brien for Sixteen Films – which won the 2016 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This touching and vital stage adaptation by Dave Johns, who played Dan in the film, toured the UK in 2023, co-produced by tiny dragon Productions, Northern Stage, Birmingham Rep and ETT, in association with Cardboard Citizens.

An irrepressible fraudster known only as the Maniac is brought into Police Headquarters just as the officers are preparing for a judicial review of the recent 'accidental' death of a suspect in custody.

Outwitting his captors, the Maniac dupes them into performing a farcical recreation of the incident, exposing the absurd corruption and terrifying idiocy at the heart of the system.

Dario Fo and Franca Rame's riotous satire has been widely performed around the world since its premiere in 1970. Tom Basden's acclaimed adaptation was first performed at Sheffield Theatres in 2022, directed by Daniel Raggett, and starring Daniel Rigby as the Maniac.

The production transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in 2023, before moving to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End.

It's 1874, and Elizabeth Thompson stuns the artistic establishment with her painting The Roll Call. Five years later, she falls two votes short of becoming the first woman elected to the Royal Academy.

In between, she shoulders the hopes and dreams of female artists across the country, while fighting for her place at a table full of top hats, neckties and mutton chop beards.

A thrilling collision of music hall, cabaret and drag king swagger, Modest tells the true story of a pioneering megastar of the Victorian art scene. Written by Ellen Brammar and with music by Rachel Barnes, it was first produced in 2023 by Middle Child in collaboration with Milk Presents at Hull Truck Theatre before touring.

Summer 1860, an elegant country house, a young boy is found dead in an outside privy. All clues point towards the murderer being a member of the grieving household.

Called to the scene is the most celebrated detective of his day, Jonathan Whicher from Scotland Yard. But this case challenges him in ways he's never been challenged before.

Over twenty years later, still haunted by the case, Whicher visits the murderer. As they replay the past, they start to question the nature of truth, the desire for certainty and the possibility of redemption.

This compelling stage adaptation of Kate Summerscale's gripping bestseller opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in May 2023.

This ensemble piece provides rich opportunities for companies looking to intrigue their audiences with a fresh take on a dark Victorian mystery.

They don't seem an obvious match. Joanne is spiky, defensive, a survivor; Paul is quiet, considered – and hiding profound grief for his father. But the pleasure he takes in cooking – and the astonishing food he prepares – creates a bond between them.

When the hotel where they both work closes and they start to spiral into poverty, it throws everything up in the air – first their plans for a cookbook and a restaurant, and, eventually, even their dreams of a future together...

Gareth Farr's play Biscuits for Breakfast is a tender, heartfelt drama about families – the ones we inherit and the ones we create – and the struggle to survive when times get tough. It opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in May 2023, directed by Tessa Walker.

In Exploring Shakespeare, acclaimed theatre director Bill Alexander takes us inside the rehearsal room to reveal – in unprecedented and captivating detail – exactly what happens there. He examines the key relationship between the actors and the director, how they work together to bring Shakespeare's vision to life, and how choices are made that will shape every aspect of the play in production.

Full of acute observations and perceptions drawn from a long and brilliant career, the book covers the essential aspects of any Shakespeare production, from understanding the world of the play, to preparing and cutting the text, deciding on costumes and set design, handling soliloquies, and considering character and backstory.

There are detailed studies of eight plays spanning the full length and breadth of the Shakespearean canon, from Titus Andronicus and The Shrew to The Tempest, via Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Lear and Twelfth Night. Alexander also provides first-hand case studies of three of his own productions, including his famous Richard III starring Antony Sher.

Personal, forthright, and full of pragmatic advice, Exploring Shakespeare is a masterclass for directors and actors, and a fascinating insight for anyone interested in Shakespeare.

Es and Flo fell fiercely in love in the eighties. They've been living as secret lovers ever since. As Es becomes more forgetful around their home, an unexpected carer arrives. Who sent this woman? Why? And can they trust her?

As the outside world comes crashing in, Flo fights to protect the life they've built together over forty years behind closed doors. And faces the hardest battle of her life – to hold on to the woman she loves.

Jennifer Lunn's play Es & Flo is a sharply observed, deeply compassionate drama, coloured with memories of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. It celebrates an older lesbian relationship, women coming together to fight for what's right, and the healing power of chosen family.

The play was produced by Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, and opened there in April 2023 before moving to Kiln Theatre, London, directed by Susie McKenna. It won the Popcorn Group Writing Award and the Nancy Dean Lesbian Playwriting Award.

In a cottage by the sea, four women live in a house made for five. Meals are prepared, stories are shared and the waves break on the shore. When only one of their two expected guests arrives for the summer, life is about to change for all of them...

Cordelia Lynn's Sea Creatures is a haunting play about grief, loss and the power of storytelling. It opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in March 2023, directed by James Macdonald.

We are all a complex mixture of the elemental energies identified by many different cultures throughout history: Earth, Air, Fire, Water – and a fifth element called Quintessence or Spirit. As an actor, you need to be able to access each of them, so that you can draw on whichever element you need to bring your role fully into life.

In The Elemental Actor, Mel Churcher explores these deep, primal drives, and gives you practical tools to harness them to make your work more powerful and alive. Her unique approach combines elements of actor training, voice work and movement to increase your range and help you bring depth, specificity and intensity to your performance.

The book includes over one hundred games and exercises to help you explore each of the elements, incorporate this work into your practice, and apply it to the world of your role. There are also tips for preparing for auditions and dealing with performance anxiety, as well as advice on how to stay healthy in body, voice and mind.

Offering an everlasting palette that will enrich any performance, whether on stage or screen, The Elemental Actor will help you release the wellspring of your imagination, and put elemental power into your work.

Summer 1945. Hitler is dead, but the war in the Pacific rages on. When six of Germany's top nuclear scientists – including three Nobel Prize winners – are detained by Allied forces at a stately home in the Cambridgeshire countryside, they find themselves shut off from the outside world. Their only distractions are board games, a broken piano and a copy of Blithe Spirit. But as the months go by, their attention turns to the ongoing war and thoughts of their broken homeland.

The scientists' tranquil summer is shattered by the inconceivable news that the Americans have succeeded where the Germans have failed: the United States has not only built an atomic bomb, but they have used one against Japan.

Katherine Moar's captivating debut play Farm Hall dramatises the true story recorded inside the bugged walls of the actual Farm Hall between July 1945 and January 1946. It was premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in March 2023, before transferring to the Theatre Royal Bath, directed by Stephen Unwin.

Sophie is about to become a single mum – a third-generation one – and she's terrified. How will she afford to feed her baby? Or a Deluxe Snuggle Pod? Can she hold on to her job? What if she's crap at parenthood? Surely she can count on her own mum and nan to help...

Except her mum's got used to having a life of her own, and doesn't fancy giving up pole-dancing class and Tinder to go back to changing nappies and no sleep. Meanwhile, fresh out of hospital with a broken leg, her nan's having a three-quarter-life crisis of her own.

From slammed doors to living-room karaoke, Lydia Marchant's play Mumsy is a sparky, soulful comedy drama about the highs and lows of motherhood. It premiered at Hull Truck Theatre in March 2023.

Amber is trapped – by her family's rules and expectations, and by her own fears. But on the running track she feels free. As her body speeds up, the world slows down. And the tangled, mixed-up words in her head start to make sense...

It's time to start a revolution: for her mother, for her sister, for herself. Run, Amber. Run.

Manjeet Mann's multi-award-winning verse novel, Run, Rebel, about a young woman beginning to take control of her life, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2021 and won the CILIP Carnegie Shadowers Choice Award, a UKLA Book Award, a Diverse Book Award and the Sheffield Children's Book Award.

This fast-paced, mesmerising stage version, adapted by the author, was first produced in 2023 by Pilot Theatre, with Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Derby Theatre and York Theatre Royal. 

In this rapid moment of expansion in queer theatre, when everything is exposed, interrogated, and investigated, This is Beyond is a time capsule of where we are now and a map for where we might go next. Co-editors Evan Tsitsias and Bilal Baig strike out to capture the magnitude of this seismic shift, asking: How far have we come? What’s changed? What’s stayed the same? What do we need to do to continue to change things? An anthology that moves like a satellite in the sky, This is Beyond confronts and expands our current perceptions so that we may continue to explore the new and unknown.

Monologues, essays, poetry, and opinion pieces speak to the transformation of queer theatre through a myriad of diverse experiences, using stories, myths, and magic to unveil the intersections of queerness and cultures. Each piece gives voice to what it means to be a member of the queer community in an ever-evolving society, offering actors of every age, colour, culture, and generation empowered queer stories to play with, ponder over, learn from, and embody within our current cultural moment.

In 2019, a group of scholar-artists led by Jill Carter stood with their audience in a liminal space at the edge of the woods—a space between now and then, a space between now and later. Together, they engaged in a survivance intervention: an Indigenous reclamation of territory, using Storyweaving practices rooted in personal connections to the land as a method of restor(y)ing treaty relationships.

Retreating to Re-Treat documents both their artistic offering and creation process, offered in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and enriching scholarship around collaborative practices. By revealing their unique and still-developing method for addressing a fraught and tangled (hi)story, the Collective Encounter invites readers to join them as we mediate those sites of profound experiences and renewal—sites in which the project of conciliation might truly begin.

A small military-occupied community sits, waiting, parched of natural water while nearby levees hold the rising global shoreline. Seventeen-year-old twins Alix and Evan pass the time in an empty, abandoned pool with what they are able to scavenge from the abandoned houses, while government official Portia returns to familiar places, her past colliding with the present. The planned evacuation notice that eventually reaches all cities has finally come, but the twins learn that survival is not guaranteed. As they rush to reach their grandmother, a retired journalist now living with dementia, her snippets of memories flow like humanity’s record player, skipping tracks before the final flood.

A non-linear poetic play that acts like a postcard from the future, Shorelines is about family and community in a world ravaged by climate change. It also speaks to the inevitable inequality of disaster response and how poorer communities are disproportionately affected by it. Mishka Lavigne’s message within her lyrical piece is urgent and multi-dimensional: it is a reminder that all things are connected and hope can only lie in the relationships we form with the people around us.

It’s 1970s Winnipeg—a time of revolution and radical possibilities—and an apartment building of Indian immigrant friends is about to be transformed by their latest arrival. A young Bengali Muslim woman, Nuzha, has just married Qasim over the phone at his mother’s insistence, and can’t wait to start her new life with him. But Qasim struggles to let go of his true love, a Canadian nurse named Abby, making him an emotionally and physically distant husband. Broken-hearted but full of pluck, Nuzha finds comfort and adventures on her own terms by exploring everything her new community has to offer. From braving the bus schedule to building close relationships with Qasim’s friends, Nuzha’s discoveries are thrilling, enriching, and crack open new possibilities for everyone.

From the creator of the powerful solo show Crash, Pamela Sinha’s New is an evocative, emotionally-astute comedy about the complex nature of love and sacrifice, joyful togetherness and piercing loneliness, and what it means to create entirely new ways of life through our willingness to tread uncharted territory.

A profound and resonant tribute to the power of writing to make meaning in tragic circumstances.

This theatrical ritual, adapted from Ruhl’s 2018 epistolary book Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, weaves together poems and letters between celebrated playwright Sarah Ruhl and poet Max Ritvo, Ruhl’s student who died of cancer at age 25. When 20-year-old Max asks to join Ruhl’s playwriting course at Yale despite having no experience writing plays, Ruhl accepts him, explaining that “funny poets are my favorite kind of human being.” The two become fast friends, and when Max’s childhood cancer recurs, their correspondence deepens, taking in poetic theory and dramatic construction as well as the steady schedule of doctor’s visits and chemotherapy sessions that more and more make up Max’s life. Still, Ritvo approaches his new situation with the inventiveness and humor we’ve come to expect from him. Far from the “Lifetime movie story of poor cancer boy and his wise, brilliant, loving mentor” that Ritvo feared their story would become, this play is never maudlin or sentimental, but is instead warm, literate, and very funny. 

A searing minimalist adaptation of Ibsen’s classic drama by one of America’s greatest contemporary playwrights.

Crafted for Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-down Broadway production starring Jessica Chastain, acclaimed playwright Amy Herzog’s adaptation of A Doll’s House is lean and tense, paring the play down to its essence to reveal the ways that Ibsen’s themes remain startlingly relevant almost 150 years after the play’s first production. Finding thrilling poetry in the rhythms of everyday speech, Herzog breathes new life into this foundational work of feminist drama, offering a version of Nora’s awakening that feels shockingly fresh and timely.

A collection of sharp, innovative plays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Fairview.

Jackie Sibblies Drury has established herself as a bold and formally innovative writer whose work upends expectations of what theater can be and should do. Her layered, complex plays deftly explore the ways in which the white gaze works to reduce and marginalize Black lives.

This new collection gathers three of her plays: Really; Social Creatures; and We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915. In these works, comedy and tragedy hover side by side as the personal meets the political and the past meets the present. Each work is a reckoning, both with the looming specter of history, but also with the performative and fractured self.

An uproarious play comprised of vignettes that deftly satirize post-“post-racial” America.

Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ is a hilarious satirical odyssey that needles post-Obama racial realities of life in the U.S. The time is the near future, and a giant plane has been chartered to take Black Americans “back to Africa.” Hurrying passengers down the runway is Peaches, a flight attendant (played by a performer in drag) who is organizing the boarding process. Within this frame, Cooper examines lives torn apart by gang violence, the aspirations of a Black middle class eager to leave behind those they feel are beneath them, and the equally delusional aspirations of some white Americans to “transition” into Blackness. Ain’t No Mo’ is a laugh-a-minute comedy that doubles as a serious investigation of the ways that Blackness in America has always been both a burden and a prize.

David is in love with King. But King is a superhero.

After an unexpected encounter, David plunges himself into a world of sex, drugs and hero worship in the hope of being rescued, until fantasy and reality merge with devastating consequences.

Danny Lee Wynter's play BLACK SUPERHERO is a brutal, unflinching, funny portrait of one man's life spiralling out of control, in an age where our idols are Kings and our superheroes Gods. It was premiered at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London, in March 2023, directed by Daniel Evans and with a cast including Dyllón Burnside and the playwright Danny Lee Wynter.

Mary has just been released from prison. She wants to come home and forget all about it – but Briana has other ideas.

Over two tumultuous days, a family is forced to confront not only their past, but everything about themselves. Because the truth doesn't go away, even if you refuse to hear it.

A powerful story of family and forgiveness, Deborah Bruce's play Dixon and Daughters was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in April 2023, directed by Róisín McBrinn and co-produced with Clean Break.

In 2017, when the public agency Waterfront Toronto decided to put up a parcel of land for development, Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s Alphabet Inc., swept in with a proposal to create the city of the future. Waterfront Toronto jumped at the opportunity to advance housing sustainability and affordability by exploring Alphabet’s innovative technology and data-driven techniques. But the project quickly started to fall apart from uneasy partnerships, sclerotic local politics, and an overwhelmingly negative public response.

In this biting comedy about the failure to build a smart city in Toronto, Michael Healey lampoons the corporate drama, epic personalities, and iconic Canadian figures involved in the messy affair between Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto. Based on the bestselling exposé, Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy by Josh O’Kane, The Master Plan exposes the hubris of big tech, the feebleness of government, and the dangers of public consultation with sharp wit and insightful commentary.

On the twentieth anniversary of its first volume, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3 is a curated collection of new works rooted in Indigenous values, aesthetics, and narrative structures. Inspired by their own dramaturgical practices and current conversations in contemporary theatre creation, co-editors Monique Mojica and Lindsay Lachance identify the invaluable and understudied ways that many Indigenous theatre artists are creating culturally specific dramaturgical processes and shifting the paradigm for what is considered “text.” By presenting models for relational theatre-making and land-based explorations outside the traditional “well-made-play” structure, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3 is more than just a collection of plays; it offers some strategies and tools for how Indigenous artists can reimagine the structures of new-play development and performance on Turtle Island.

An anthology that identifies and highlights a vast array of anti-colonial performing arts processes, including reclamation, embodiment, and community-engaged work—to name only a few—Mojica and Lachance gather the works of artists leading these practices to not only honour how their plays are expanding dramaturgy, but to build Indigenous performance literacies for all practitioners creating on Turtle Island.

David is gay, disabled and profoundly horny. He can't eat, drink or shower by himself – or wank. Totally inexperienced, he embarks on a sexual and romantic odyssey, armed with a fierce brain, and dick pics that he has to get someone to take.

Can he keep it casual whilst also relying on round-the-clock care? And will he manage the thrill and uncertainty of random hook-ups after a lifetime of knockbacks?

Animal is a hilarious, challenging and heartbreaking play by Jon Bradfield, from a story by Bradfield and Josh Hepple. It won the inaugural Through the Mill Playwriting Prize, was shortlisted for the Papatango Prize, and was first performed at the Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester, and Park Theatre, London, in 2023.

What is the future of Blackness? Obsidian Theatre presents twenty-one versions of it.

In 2021, Obsidian Theatre engaged twenty-one writers to create twenty-one new stories about imagined Black futures. Twenty-one to celebrate Obsidian’s twenty-first anniversary in 2021. Each playwright was tasked with scripting a ten-minute monodrama in response to the question “What is the future of Blackness?” To counter the intense early-pandemic isolation and the trauma of witnessing heightened violence toward Black bodies, Obsidian’s goal was to give as many opportunities to as many diverse Black artists as possible and to bring new voices together from both theatre and film. It was a grand experiment to create a rich tapestry of possibilities and to uplift Black artists in the process.

A radical offering in unprecedented times, newly appointed Obsidian artistic director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu’s curatorial aim was joyful, aspirational, and empowering: come together in this moment and create something communal, unapologetically Black, and with the Black gaze at its centre—art as the architecture for creating those futures.

Set seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear’s daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world.

Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts—shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story’s narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority—how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling—the way we all struggle—to find their place in this world.

A clear, supportive and comprehensive guide to writing a play – based on the author's long-running playwriting masterclasses, as taught at the UK's National Theatre.

This book leads you through everything you need to know, including:

• The theatrical tools and techniques you can use to bring your play to life on the stage (and how these differ from writing for film and TV)
• Discovering and trusting your writing process, with a range of approaches for developing your initial idea into a completed script
• Understanding your characters, including their goals and central conflicts, and using emotional logic to connect them to your story
• Finding the dramatic structure and theatrical setting that best suits your play
• The key elements of constructing a great scene, including how to handle exposition, invoke tension, deepen characterisation and create effective transitions
• Writing engaging, active dialogue by finding each character's voice, balancing exposition with subtext, and rooting what a character says in their specific context

Throughout, you'll find examples from classical and modern plays, plus insights from other contemporary playwrights into their own writing journeys. Each chapter provides a set of exercises to help you practise what you've learnt.

There's also advice on what to do once you've finished your script – including redrafting, receiving feedback and taking notes – and how to navigate your play's progress towards production.

Whether you're an emerging playwright or embarking on your first-ever play, The Playwright's Journey will help you develop your creativity, strengthen your connection to your material, and transform your idea into a fully formed play that feels alive on the page – and the stage.

Gabriel Dolan's never been up to much. That's what everyone says. Until she meets Alex, a young, ambitious woman who sells essential oils for a multi-level marketing company called Paradise – and overnight, Gabriel is drawn into a bright, new, floral-scented world.

In Paradise, you're your own boss. In Paradise, you could make a fortune. Embraced by a new community of women just like her, Gabriel rises through the ranks of the company like a shooting star. But when she gets to the top, it doesn't quite feel like she thought it would.

Margaret Perry's Paradise Now! is a funny and raging play about ambition, exploitation and the search for connection in a fractured world. It was first performed by an all-female cast at the Bush Theatre, London, in December 2022, directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart.

Entrenched in her picturesque Devonshire village, Ivy Tiller is preparing to wage a war.

Her target: the invasive grey squirrel. Her goal: to oust the invaders and restore the native red squirrels as the 'rightful' inhabitants. Galvanised by her important mission, Ivy's determination swells to uncomfortable heights.

Bea Roberts' blackly comic play Ivy Tiller: Vicar's Daughter, Squirrel Killer challenges our assumptions about who belongs and who thrives, and exposes the dark side of the rural idyll. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in October 2022.

When Eddie returns home to Shropshire, he falls back into his fractious, complicated relationship with his father, both skirting around things long left unsaid. As their connection starts to evolve, can they break through and find the new beginning they both need?

Tom Wentworth's Little Bits of Ruined Beauty is a darkly comic play examining the subtle shift from cared-for to carer, and how dignity and independence are maintained in isolated rural areas.

It was premiered in 2022 by Pentabus on a tour of the UK, directed by Nickie Miles-Wildin, and commissioned and supported by Unlimited, celebrating the work of disabled artists.

Scotland, 1504, seen fresh through the eyes of new arrivals Ellen and Anne, two Moorish women who were expected to take their place at a royal court… but not this one.

Both women now have to fight to find and keep a place in the dazzling, dangerous world of the Scottish court of James IV. It's a world where war is never far away, words of love and promises of peace are not what they seem, and where poets might turn out to be more dangerous than any assassin.

Rona Munro continues her journey through an uncharted period of Scottish history with James IV: Queen of the Fight, which was first presented in 2022 by Raw Material and Capital Theatres in association with National Theatre of Scotland, and directed by Laurie Sansom.

It follows the spectacular success of Munro's plays about James I, II and III, which were first performed by National Theatre of Scotland, transferred to the National Theatre, London, and were named Best New Play at the Evening Standard Awards.

The original three-play cycle is available in the volume The James Plays: James I, II and III.

A series of random nocturnal assaults in the back streets and alleyways of Victorian London are spreading fear and panic. Meanwhile, the friends of a highly respected doctor are beginning to wonder why he goes missing on exactly the same nights…

Neil Bartlett's inventive, brilliantly theatrical adaptation cuts right to the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson's darkly fascinating tale of male violence, guilt and privilege.

It premiered at Derby Theatre in 2022, directed by Artistic Director Sarah Brigham, before transferring to Queen's Theatre Hornchurch. Written for an ensemble and with several key roles for women, this adaptation will appeal to any theatre or company looking to thrill their audiences with a bold new take on this classic tale of murder and mayhem.

Medea and Jason, clinging together as refugees in Corinth, have struggled to bring up their beloved offspring in this alien and unsympathetic society. Now Jason has a plan to better integrate himself. Unfortunately, this involves abandoning his wife, the mother of his children…

Spurned, destitute, desperate, Medea exacts her terrible retribution.

Liz Lochhead's Scots-inflected version of Euripides' classic revenge tragedy was first performed by Theatre Babel in 2000 and won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. It was revived by the National Theatre of Scotland as part of the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival, with Adura Onashile as Medea, directed by Michael Boyd.

2022 Edinburgh Fringe First Award

A permanently single, professionally neurotic stand-up comedian finally meets his Mr Right – and then does everything wrong.

Is Mr Right quite what he seems? And just how far will the comedian go to get a laugh?

Marcelo Dos Santos's play Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is a dark and biting one-man show about vulnerability, intimacy, ego and truth. It premiered in the Roundabout at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, produced by Francesca Moody Productions, directed by Matthew Xia, and starring Samuel Barnett.

The play received an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and Samuel Barnett was named the first winner of The Stage Edinburgh Awards 2022 for his performance.

Five insomniacs try to make it through the night. From dusk to dawn, they struggle with a crisis in their lives which they must resolve by morning. Increasingly conscious of their shortening futures and lengthening pasts, they fill their nights with distracting activities, desperate sleep techniques, evaluations of their lives, delusions, fears, panics and utter foolishness as they prepare to face the day.

Five Characters in Search of a Good Night's Sleep was conceived in response to the current public-health crisis of insomnia, with 30% of the UK population suffering from some form of sleep disturbance. It was created through a series of workshops, and first produced by ViSiBLE Theatre Ensemble at Southwark Playhouse, London, in 2022, directed by acclaimed director Mike Alfreds. 

ViSiBLE is dedicated to creating performance work that throws fresh perspectives on later life and living longer. Their work is created collaboratively, drawing on the creativity and talent of Britain's huge wealth of experienced older actors.

The play is a fascinating insight into a condition that is widely experienced but little understood, and will provide valuable material for other actors – especially older ones – to perform.

2022 Papatango New Writing Prize

A family packs into a small house with a tangled history. Matt is here, yearning to reach someone he's lost. His cousin Jess is here, too; she just wants to feel something. Anything. And Aunt Monica and Jeff are still here, just about. Together, ferocious and funny, they laugh, they scrap, they remember.

Tonight these four people, inextricably bound yet so far apart, will finally confront the old decisions that haunt them. How does a family make a future, when everything that holds it together lies in the past?

Clive Judd's play Here is a tender, funny and utterly truthful story about family and feeling. It was premiered by Papatango at Southwark Playhouse, London, in November 2022 after winning the Papatango New Writing Prize, whose previous discoveries have gone on to win Olivier, Critics' Circle and OffWestEnd Awards and be performed worldwide.

Best Musical Production, UK Theatre Awards

South Bank Sky Arts Award for Theatre

Poppy wants to escape her old life in London. Joy and Jimmy want to spend the rest of their lives together. Rose and Harry want the new life they've been promised.

A history of modern Britain told through the stories of one Sheffield housing estate, Standing at the Sky's Edge charts the hopes and dreams of three generations over the course of six tumultuous decades. With a book by acclaimed playwright Chris Bush, and set to the irresistible songs of legendary singer-songwriter Richard Hawley, it is a heartfelt exploration of the power of community and what it is we call home.

Standing at the Sky's Edge was first performed at Sheffield Theatres in 2019, when it won Best Musical Production at the UK Theatre Awards and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Theatre. It was revived in 2022, before transferring to the National Theatre, London, directed by Robert Hastie.

It's 1567. James Melville is an intelligent, charismatic and skilled diplomat – and also one of the most loyal servants of Mary Stuart, the troubled Queen of Scots. It's a time of political turmoil, and the shocking crimes he has witnessed have shaken him.

Now he needs to decide who's guilty, who's innocent, and who is too dangerous to accuse. Change is coming, but at what price?

Mary is an explosive political thriller, and part of Rona Munro's breathtaking theatrical exploration of Scottish history. It is the sixth instalment of The James Plays Cycle which began with James I, II and III, performed by National Theatre of Scotland, including a run at the National Theatre in London, and which won the Evening Standard and Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards in 2014, and James IV, co-produced by Raw Material and Capital Theatres in association with National Theatre of Scotland, in 2022.

Mary received its world premiere at Hampstead Theatre, London, also in 2022, directed by Roxana Silbert.

Pearl, Jan and Linda are enjoying a long-awaited break on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, when a surprise visitor turns up. They haven't seen Shelley for years, and their retreat becomes a reunion—and pretty soon, a riot.

But a lot has changed since they were last together and, cut off from the mainland, tensions rise with the tide. As the sky darkens, the island grows restless with echoes of the past. Will the four still be friends when dawn breaks?

Following the smash hits Ladies' Day and Ladies Down Under, Amanda Whittington's Ladies Unleashed is the third play in her Ladies Trilogy. A moving comedy about friendship, growing older and living for today, it was first performed at Hull Truck Theatre in September 2022, directed by Mark Babych.

The Ladies are back, and amateur theatre companies—as well as their audiences—are sure to delight in their riotous exploits.

A chance encounter at an AA meeting and they're drawn to one another. Then later, once they're drinking again, they both have this almost-feeling that they might have met before – could even have been together, sometime in the past... They should really get sober together and figure it all out: that would be a worthwhile project. Maybe they will. Just after one last drink...

A compassionate and unflinching study of love, addiction and memory, Joe White's play Blackout Songs was first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, in November 2022, directed by Guy Jones.

John Gabriel Borkman, once an illustrious entrepreneur, has been brought low by a prison sentence for fraud. As he paces alone in an upstairs room, bankrupt and disgraced, he is obsessed by dreams of his comeback.

Downstairs, his estranged wife plots the restoration of the family name. When her sister arrives unannounced, she triggers a desperate showdown with the past.

Henrik Ibsen's most contemporary play and his penultimate, John Gabriel Borkman is gripping, penetrating and savagely funny. This version by Lucinda Coxon premiered at the Bridge Theatre, London, in September 2022, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with a cast led by Clare Higgins, Simon Russell Beale and Lia Williams.

Two powerful plays about the shattering impact of war, and the astonishing resilience of those living through it, written by two of Ukraine's leading playwrights.

'They've mobilised all the living now, the fifth call took the last of the living. But the war keeps on. So high command asked us.'

Sasha, a Colonel in the Ukrainian Army, has died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving his relatives Katia and Oksana to mourn for him. But a year later, as war intensifies, the army has resorted to recruiting the dead. Sasha is anxious to be resurrected so he can rejoin the fight, but can his family bear to lose him all over again? Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha by Natal'ya Vorozhbit blends reality and the supernatural in a startling exploration of the effects of war and conflict.

'I want to report a robbery... I was robbed. What was stolen from me? Almost everything... Home, land, car, work, friends, city, faith in goodness...'

Donbas, 2014. A nameless woman stands in the street, trying to sell a basket of kittens. She has lost everything else she holds dear. Her only remaining hope is to find a home for the kittens, since she cannot offer them one herself. Pussycat in Memory of Darkness by Neda Nezhdana is an unflinching examination of Russia's war on Ukraine through the brutalised eyes of one woman.

The two plays were translated by Sasha Dugdale and John Farndon, respectively, and performed in English at the Finborough Theatre, London, as part of their #VoicesFromUkraine season in 2022.

10% of the proceeds from sales of this book will be donated to the Voices of Children Charitable Foundation, a Ukrainian charity providing urgently needed psychological and psychosocial support to children affected by the war in Ukraine.

Sir Neil Marriot had a "good pandemic," becoming familiar to millions from his TV appearances as a government medical advisor. His service even earned him a knighthood, and he is now rewarding himself with a lavish birthday party.

But, amidst the oak panelling, the champagne and the silver service, his family are at one another's throats again, and he thinks there's something familiar—and somehow unsettling—about one of the catering staff...

The Snail House is a play about how the past impacts on the present, and how overconfidence can have disastrous consequences. Written and directed by Richard Eyre, it premiered at Hampstead Theatre, London, in September 2022.

Zafar flees homophobic persecution in Pakistan to seek asylum in the UK. Londoner Bilal (or Billy as he prefers to be known) is ground down by years of Grindr and the complexity of being a brown gay man.

In Soho, at 2 a.m., parallel worlds collide – and Zafar and Billy's lives are about to change forever.

The P Word is Waleed Akhtar's sharp-witted and devastating play charting the parallel lives of two gay Pakistani men as they negotiate everything from casual hook-ups to the UK's hostile environment.

A story of who wins in the luck of life's draw, it was premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2022, directed by Anthony Simpson-Pike.

Frantic Assembly's electrifying take on Shakespeare's tragedy of paranoia, sex and murder, firmly rooted in a volatile twenty-first century.

In a world of broken glass and shattered promises, of poisonous manipulation and explosive violence, Othello's passionate affair with Desdemona becomes the catalyst for jealousy, betrayal, revenge and the darkest intents.

As relevant today as it ever was, Othello exposes the tension, fear and paranoia buried beneath the veneer of our relationships and how easily that can be maliciously exploited.

Frantic Assembly's touring production was first performed in 2008, with revivals in 2014 and 2022. This edition of Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett's muscular, radically adapted text also features articles and interviews about the production and Frantic Assembly's revolutionary work.

Jess has a great life: a job she loves, a sharp sense of humour and a close group of friends.

When austerity threatens the world she has worked hard to build, Jess makes a stand to protect those she holds most dear.

Capturing the humour, sadness and joy of everyday life, Francesca Martinez's play All of Us is a passionate and timely look at the human cost of abandoning those who struggle to fit in.

It premiered at the National Theatre, London, in August 2022, in a production directed by Ian Rickson, with an ensemble cast featuring Francesca Martinez in the role of Jess. It was shortlisted for the 2022 George Devine Award.