Books in the Modern Plays series

Go where there's violence. Silicon Valley. The future. A rocket launches. Luke is an aerospace billionaire who can talk to anyone. But God is talking to him. He sets out to change the world. Only violence stands in his way.Christopher Shinn's gripping play received its world premiere at the Almeida Theatre on 12 August 2017 in a production directed by Ian Rickson and featuring Ben Whishaw as Luke.

All the rooms reek of lavender and rose petals. There's something dead about it. Like flowers the day after a ball.Returning to her home town in the house of her dreams, her husband with a new job on the horizon, and a feeling of change in the air. Yet, for Heather, there is only the feeling of boredom, a feeling as futile as it is fatal.A powerful and emotionally charged play about a woman's separation and isolation from the affluent, materialistic society that she has become a part of. Set in 1960s Edgbaston, Heather Gardner is a fresh and stylish new take on Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.It is written by one of the UK's most promising young writers Robin French, whose first play, Bear Hug, won the Royal Court Young Writer's Festival and was produced at the Royal Court in 2004, where it earned an extended run.

On the closing night of Edenderry's Savoy cinema, three men have gathered for an unusual wake to remember of the life of the cinema and its place in their lives.

World war breaks out in Discworld play script Discworld goes to war, with armies of sardines, warriors, fishermen, squid and at least one very camp follower. As two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh- Morpork City Watch faces unpleasant foes who are out to get him...and that's just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse.

Amidst the filth and fury of Dublin 1904, the theatrical event of the century is about to explode... Will the Irish National Theatre of Ireland seize its chance for glory? This work is a gleefully innovative look at Dublin's lurid past, a rampant piece of story theatre that has delighted critics and audiences alike during its tour of Ireland.

Features two plays: "By a Thread" explores the immediate experience of adolescent insecurity and issues of responsibility, love, jealousy and death; and "The Raft" - produced by BBC Radio 4 - offers a moving and daring exploration of a young mother's struggle to survive the desolation of prison and separation from her son.

Opening at Soho Theatre, London, in September 2007 in a co-production with Talawa Theatre Company, Pure Gold is the debut work by Michael Bhim, winner of the Alfred Fagon Award.

Stark and imperative, but shot through with a sense of warm humanity, Beth Steel's debut play Ditch is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, and a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours.

In The Trial of Ubu, Simon Stephens takes the grotesque and amoral megalomaniac dictator from Alfred Jarry's proto-surrealist 1896 play Ubu Roi and places him before a twenty-first century international tribunal. Set in January 2010, at the International Criminal Tribunal sitting in The Hague, it is day 436 of the trial of the dictator Ubu. Sitting before a UN constituted International Tribunal, he is charged with Crimes against Humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. Simon Stephens' virtuosic satire examines the often absurd legal wrangling of the international justice system. The Trial of Ubu is a savage comedy that interrogates the assumptions of a Court as it struggles to deal with defendants who are not only opposed to the morality of law, but exist in a different moral dimension altogether.Exploring the central legitimacy and effectiveness of international law, Stephens asks how a civilised society can deal with the perpetrators of unspeakable crime, and wherein lies the legitimacy of any internationally convened tribunal. Taking a wry and intelligent look at the international courts when reduced to senseless and convoluted legal altercations, this funny yet unsettling play asks important questions about legal against moral justice, and the futility of reasoned argument in the presence of a heinous malefactor.

Snookered is funny but probing contemporary depiction of young men navigating what it means to be young, British and Muslim.

Sharp, thoughtful and mysterious, How the World Began is a powerful story about an outsider in a close-knit, devastated community. Looking at the tension between secular religion and evolution, and how this is taught in schools, this provocative, intelligent play explores the clash between faith and science.

"I believe that open markets and free enterprise are the best imaginable force for improving human wealth and happiness. And I would go further: where they work properly, they can actually promote morality." David Cameron, January 2012Anders Lustgarten's play is an exploration of our current government's politics of austerity and a look at possible alternatives. If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep was supported by the Harold Pinter Playwright's Award which is given annually by Pinter's widow Lady Antonia Fraser.

An inventive take on the classic myth, Eurydice is by the highly-acclaimed US playwright Sarah Ruhl and includes magical, dreamlike surrealism, lyrical beauty and heart-rending pathos.

A contemporary political play exploring race, identity and the concept of home, by Olivier Award-winning playwright Bola Agbaje.

"She's goin' back there. I can tell.She's breakin' her promise.She's breakin' my heart.She said she never would."Sive and Orlaith are twelve and thirteen. Yet despite their age, they are each responsible for the care of their respective parents. When the girls meet on a social day for carers, they forge a relationship that takes them on an epic journey through the twisting backroads of small towns, friendship and love.Desolate Heaven is a story of two young girls burdened with unnatural responsibilities. It is a story of falling in love for the first time and a story about running away. It is a story about growing up too soon and about why love can sometimes be dangerous.

A collection of three of Tom Murphy's most iconic plays - Famine, A Whistle in the Dark and Conversations on a Homecoming - covering the period from the Great Hunger of the nineteenth century to the 'new' Ireland of the 1970s.

Adapted for the stage by the author, Takin' Over the Asylum is a hilarious, updated and profoundly moving adaptation of Donna Franceschild's Bafta-winning BBC TV-series. Set in a Scottish mental institution, the play reveals hope and joy in the fragile beauty of the human heart. When Ready Eddie McKenna, Soul Survivor and double glazing salesman, arrives to reinvigorate St Jude's defunct hospital radio station he turns more than the ramshackle station upside down. The whisky drinking would-be DJ meets the 19-year-old bipolar Campbell, schizophrenic electronic genius Fergus, OCD Rosalie and the elusive self-harming Francine. Fighting against illness and perception Eddie and the patients of St Jude's strive for their dreams to be accepted.

'I missed first time. I could feel his skull caving in. It was like a shell.' Morning - a play for young people - is the latest offering from acclaimed playwright Simon Stephens, written after a workshop involving actors from the Young Company at the Lyric, Hammersmith and the Theater, Basel, Switzerland.It's the end of summer in a small, claustrophobic town and two friends are about to go their separate ways: one to university; the other will be staying local. But no matter what separates them, they will always share one moment: a moment that changed them forever. This dark coming-of-age play, to be performed by the Lyric Young Company, is a disturbing look at the cruel acts we are capable of committing; our society's numbness to physical pain; and the consequences of our actions.This programme text will coincide with the Lyric's production of the play at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the Festival (2 - 22nd September) followed by a brief run at the Lyric Hammersmith, London in September.

Vincent Woods's poetic retelling of the Classic Irish story of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna - a story of love, hatred and revenge - transforms this timeless story into a compelling contemporary drama. Published to tie-in with the world premiere at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in June 2005.

Set in a modern-day courtroom in New York during a week when there are Middle East peace talks being brokered in town. This humorous play is a courtroom farce which lampoons the American judicial system and exposes the hypocrisy surrounding personal prejudices and political correctness.

You remember when we started to hunt whales again?We fought monsters and we killed them and wrestled the oil from their dead bodies and we sold it.In the future we hunt whales for the oil in their bodies. Just like they did in centuries past. The oil of a single whale can run an army for a week. This is new science. This is our future. So we send gangs of men out onto the dark, cold sea to bring back the things we need.The crew of the Pequod are going to sea because it's their job. But Ahab, captain of the Pequod, is not going to sea for the oil or for the money. Ahab is going for revenge. Revenge on the vast whale that took him down into the black depths of the ocean. Revenge on the greatest whale in all the oceans: a perfectly white whale. And Ishmael, a young man new to whaling, is going to sea seeking a hunter's violence, trying to stop the thoughts of violence in his heart.And we are all going with them.The White Whale premiered on 4 September 2014, at Leeds Dock, UK in a production by Slung Low theatre company.

The Early Bird taps into the darkest fears of any parent - the disappearance of their child - to brilliantly capture the nightmare of recrimination and loss. It premiered at the Belfast Theatre Festival in October 2006.