Books in the Contemporary Dramatists series

"Stephens writes dramas set in uncaring, uncompromising worlds, whose characters speak in a language at once naturalistic and yet artificially pared-down and whose uncertain attempts to assert their own identities sometimes lead to gratuitous and brutal acts of violence." - Financial TimesA fifth collection of plays by one of Britain's most prolific contemporary playwrights, Simon Stephens, charting his work from 2011-2016, ranging from London's Royal Court Theatre, Manchester's Royal Exchange and Broadway. Wastwater (2011) "Metaphoric, allusive, and thoroughly disturbing in its evocation of suspicion and uncertainty, Wastwater is a thought-provoking play whose quiet intensity stays with you for days - its effect is like that of a ugly stone dropped into a pool, which results in constant ripples of dirty water lapping at your subconscious" (Aleks Sierz)Birdland (2014) "Mega-fame and limitless cash can turn a man into a monster, and Simon Stephens's new play excellently evokes its hero's spiritually shrunken world" (Michael Billington, Guardian) Blindsided (2014) "the dialogue has a rare quality of moment-by-moment intensity" (Telegraph)Song From Far Away (2015) "a meditative monologue - a searching study of impotently self-aware emotional insufficiency" (Independent) Heisenberg (2016) "Mr. Stephens ... is an uncannily subtle dramatist who never wears his depths on the surface ... he probes clichés until they fall apart, before reassembling them into solid but transformed shapes, reminding us why such clichés have become enduring elements of our collective mythology." (Ben Brantley, New York Times)

The first in a series of volumes presenting Mamet's plays from the 1970s and 1980s, this book includes "Duck Variations", "Sexual Perversity in Chicago", "Squirrels", American Buffalo", "The Water Engine" and "Mr Happiness".

This volume contains the complete collection of Sarah Kane's plays, including "Blasted"; "Phaedra's Love"; "Cleansed"; "Crave"; "4.48 Psychosis"; and "Skin".

Stephens Plays: 2 brings together four major plays by this award-winning playwright from the first decade of the twenty-first century and the short play Sea Wall, frist produced at the Bush Theatre in October 2008. The collection features an introduction by the author.

This collection brings together four of the early plays from the winner of the 2002 Pearson Best New Play Award. Since "Bluebird" in 1998, Stephens has gained recognition for humane plays that display a sharp observation and compassionate response to the lives of ordinary people in urban locations.

The second collection of plays from eminent playwright James Graham, bringing together four of his state-of-the-nation plays.The volume includes the following plays, alongside an introduction by the author:This House (2012) explores Westminster and the 1974 hung parliament through a combination of wit and waspish dialogue, comedy and political comment, and historical and contemporary concerns.The Angry Brigade (2014) takes a look at the story behind the Angry Brigade - a British anarchist group who carried out a series of bomb attacks between 1970 and 1972.The Vote (2015) looks at what happens in Britain on election night through the eyes of those at the polling station. Set in a fictional London polling station, Graham's play dramatises the final ninety minutes before the polls close in the 2015 general election.Monster Raving Loony (2016) explores the life and exploits of Screaming Lord Sutch to examine the state of the nation and Britain's post-war identity crisis. It tells the story of Sutch through a cavalcade of comic characters from music hall to Monty Python, panto to Partridge.

Bond Plays: 10 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding and Early Morning. The volume comprises four previously unpublished plays, one previously published play and a comprehensive introduction by the author.Dea, a heroine, has committed a terrible act and has been exiled. When she meets someone from her past, she is forcefully confronted by the broken society that drove her to commit her crimes. In this play, Edward Bond takes from the Greek and Jacobean drama the fundamental classical problems of the family and war to vividly picture our collapsing society. Dea received its premiere at Sutton Theatre in 2016.The Testament of this Day is Edward Bond's third original radio drama. A young man embarks on two journeys, though he is in control of only one. He soon discovers there is no going back, from either. The play is an arresting drama about the world today and was first produced by BBC Radio 4 in 2016.The Price of One is set in among city ruins in a war zone. An occupying soldier carries a baby he has rescued from the rubble and dust. He meets a woman carrying a baby of her own. What ensues is a struggle between two enemies demanding justice in the midst of war. A modern tragedy, this play is an exploration of eternity and madness and the supermarket culture. It received its premiere in 2016.The Angry Roads considers how young people today grow up in a world that their parents never knew. In a flat a teenage boy is sorting through play things from his childhood; he is sorting through his past in search of the truth about an accident that destroyed his family. The Angry Roads was commissioned by Big Brum Theatre Company and premiered in 2015.The Hungry Bowl is a portrait of a a ghost town. Outside a harsh wind rattles the windows. Inside, people go hungry and start boarding up their homes. When a young girl insists on feeding her imaginary friend, a bitter struggle for a future ensues for the power of the imagination to transform lives. The play is a moving and audacious modern fable that explores the impact of hard times on family life, commissioned by Big Brum and premiered in 2012.The volume features an introduction by the author that looks at theatre and culture in a post-Brexit referendum, post-truth and post-Trump era.

The third in a series of "World Classics" presenting David Mamet's stage plays. Those in this volume date from the 1980s.

This collection of Jim Cartwright's plays includes "Road", "Bed", "Two" and "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice".

"Madman and Specialists" examines the way in which war exposes and clarifies human conduct; "Opera Woynosi" is adpated from Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" and is a fierce assault on totalitarianism; and four other Wole Soyinka plays are included in this volume.

Lucy Prebble is one of Britain's foremost writers for the stage and screen. This eagerly anticipated play collection brings together her landmark plays for the first time, showcasing her work from 2003 to 2019. Beginning with her George Devine Award-winning play The Sugar Syndrome it continues through her explosive look at the biggest financial scandal in history, concluding with her pointed dramatization of the one of the most shocking news stories of the 2010s. The Sugar Syndrome (2003) Dani is on a mission. She's just 17, hates her parents, skives college and prefers life in the chatrooms. What she's looking for is someone honest and direct. Instead she finds Tim, a man twice her age, who thinks she is 11 and a boy. What seems at first to be a case of crossed wires, ends up as an unlikely, and unsettling friendship between the two, which culminates in a shocking, and morally challenging revelation.Enron (2009) One of the most infamous scandals in financial history became a theatrical epic in Enron, a dazzling exposition of the shadowy mechanisms of economic deceit. Mixing classical tragedy with savage comedy and surreal metaphor, Enron follows a group of flawed men and women in a narrative of greed and loss which reviews the tumultuous 1990s, and the financial chaos which has spilled over into the new century.The Effect (2012) a clinical romance. Two young volunteers, Tristan and Connie, agree to take part in a clinical drug trial. Succumbing to the gravitational pull of attraction and love, however, Tristan and Connie manage to throw the trial off course, much to the frustration of the clinicians involved.A Very Expensive Poison (2019) A shocking assassination in the heart of London. In a bizarre mix of high-stakes global politics and radioactive villainy, a man pays with his life. At this time of global crises and a looming new Cold War, A Very Expensive Poison sends us careering through the shadowy world of international espionage from Moscow to Mayfair.

A third collection of work by this acclaimed playwright 'whose plays, more than anyone else's, have brought the experience of black urban youth onto the stage' Observer

Five recent hit plays by one of the most talented writers to emerge from the 1990s who made his mark with the seminal Shopping and F***ing.

This first collection of Mike Bartlett's plays showcases the adroit expertise and flair of a writer known for laser-sharp political comment, tight dialectics and needlingly real characters. Charting Mike Bartlett's stellar rise as a playwright, this volume is introduced by Sacha Wares.

A collection of Mark Ravenhill's plays: "Shopping and Fucking"; "Faust"; Handbag"; and "Some Explicit Polaroids".

''Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation'' Time OutShoot/Get Treasure/Repeat: ''A dramatic cycle that is, in its way, epic, but is splintered into many small shards. touches deftly on the impact of war on everyone involved'' Financial TimesOver There:''Ravenhill explores postwar Germany''s division and unification through the power battles between twin brothers. The result is fantastically clever and ingenious'' GuardianA Life in Three Acts: ''By turns charming, funny, informative and, in its final segment, lump-in-the-throat moving as Bourne charts the loss of friends and lovers to Aids, and contemplates old age'' GuardianTen Plagues: ''A remarkable song-cycle. it''s the portrait of grief beyond measure that''s so affecting and which this moving hour of solitudinous lamentation, confusion and defiance brings beautifully to the fore.'' TelegraphGhost Story: ''both a satire and a moving story about illness'' GuardianThe Experiment: ''Mark Ravenhill keeps things creepy in his monologue, The Experiment, in which he plays the satiny-voiced, slippery narrator. The story, and the narrator''s level of complicity, keeps shifting. Ravenhill asks us to consider which version, if any, might be acceptable, and how much we might be willing to avert our eyes from for the greater good.'' Independent

Four plays inspired by and originating on the European stage from one of Britain's most important playwrights.Three Kingdoms was presented at Teater NO99 in Tallinn, Estonia on 17 September 2011, before opening at the Munich Kammerspiele, Germany, on 15 October 2011. 'An inconsolable mood of dread, abandon, violence and suspicion lurks beneath the show's skin of arty insouciance, and at times the script attains a lyrical pitch of accusation against the West that quite overrides the flippancy. There's something of value here.' Daily Telegraph;The Trial of Ubu premiered at the Schauspielhaus Essen in a co-production with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam. 'The play certainly gets at the banality of evil, and evokes the slow, sometimes dull, often uncertain slog of justice.' Sunday Times.Subtitled 'A Play For Young People', Morning was developed in partnership between the Lyric Hammersmith, London, and the Junges Theater, Göttingen. The Financial Times described it as 'theatrically daring and uncompromising'; Carmen Disruption, a reimagining of Bizet's opera, premiered at the Deutsche Spielhaus in spring, 2014, before its UK premiere at the Almeida, London, in April 2015. 'You can't help but be moved by the circumstances facing the five main characters. There's an understanding and a compassion amid the bleakness. And a fierce sense that something needs to change.' Guardian;

This collection of Anthony Neilson's plays contains: "Normal"; "Penetrator"; "Year of the Family"; "The Night Before Christmas"; and "The Censor".

Jonathan Harvey has worked with the Royal Court and National theatres, written the sitcom "Gimme Gimme Gimme" for television and collaborated with the Pet Shop Boys, writing the words to their musical "Closer to Heaven". This book contains three of his plays.

Formerly part of the "World Dramatists" series of play collections by classic and modern playwrights, including foreign works in workable and accurate translations, this title and seven others are reissued in a new format under the heading, "World Classics".

Represents some of the work of the Dublin playwright, Tom Murphy. "The Gigli Concert" had its London premiere at the Almeida Theatre in 1992. "Conversations on a Homecoming" was revived at the Abbey Theatre, and "Bailegangaire" was first performed in Galway and London in 1985.

A collection of plays by the author Anthony Minghella who has also written for and directed films, including "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and the Channel 4 series, "What if it's Raining"."Made in Bangkok" was his first West End play and won the Olivier "Most Promising Playwright" Award.

Released to follow on from "Michael Frayn Plays: 2", this anthology contains three of Frayn's plays: "Here"; "Now You Know"; and "La Bele Vivette". The plays explore time and space, official and unofficial secrets, idle curiosity and investigative purpose.

The internationally acclaimed dramatist Edward Bond endures as one of the towering figures of contemporary British theatre. His plays are read at schools and university level. "Edward Bond is the most radical playwright to have emerged from the sixti

Howard Brenton is one of Britain's best-known and most controversial dramatists

This third collection of plays by David Edgar includes "Our Own People", "Teendreams", "Maydays" and "That Summer", encompassing some of his best work from the late 1970s and early 80s, demonstrating the range of one of Britain's major political playwrights.

A mixture of social satire, comedy and tragedy. This volume contains two major plays, "Red Noses" and "Sunset Glories", and a series of three short plays on disability including "Nobody Here But Us Chickens". Two plays on figures from the past, "Columbus" and "Socrates" have also been included.