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The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, published to coincide with the world tour of a magnificent musical and theatrical production directed by Tim Supple

A play which looks at the political costs of women rising to the top. This volume is published in the Student Edition series and as well as the text of the play there is a chronology of the playwright's life and work, an introduction giving the theatrical and social content of the play and questions for study.

A novel for young adults about the complex issue of refugees.

This is a adaptation of Carlo Goldini's 18th century comedy about a wily servant who gets the best of his masters by hook and crook.

A reissue of Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo's play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist - a sharp satire on police corruption. The play concerns the case of an anarchist railway worker who, in 1969, 'fell' to his death from a police headquarters' window.

Freedom has only ever meant Love. And life lived without loveIs not life enough. Chess is in prison. Facing a lengthy sentence, her cell mate, Serena, becomes her soul mate. But when Serena is given parole, Chess faces total isolation.Hope comes in the form of a music producer looking for a reason to love music again. She finds a powerful voice in Chess. But to harness her talent, Chess must first face her past. Featuring Kae Tempest's trademark lyrical fireworks and live music, this is a story of love and redemption. Hopelessly Devoted received its world premiere on 19 September 2013 at the DOOR, Birmingham Rep, co-produced by Paines Plough and Birmingham Rep. It toured the UK again in 2014.

Good evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.

And that's the moment when I leave.The moment when the jokes fail us. When I fail. I fail.This precise moment here, look, see with your ears.The Fool leaves King Lear before the blinding. Before the killing starts. Before the ice-creams in the interval.In his new solo work, playwright Tim Crouch draws on ideas of virtual reality to send the Fool back to the future of the play that he left. Back to a world without moral leadership or integrity; a world where wealth covers vice; where the poor are dehumanised; where the jokes fall flat; where live art has become the privilege of the few.Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel is a daringly unaccommodating piece of theatre that switches between scathingly funny stand-up and an audacious act of collective imagining. King Lear meets stand-up meets the metaverse. Crouch's previous celebrated works include An Oak Tree, The Author, Adler & Gibb, Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation, and Beginners.This edition was published to coincide with the production at The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in August 2022.

Ghosts is published to coincide with the Gate Theatre's production of Amelia Bullmore's new translation of Ibsen's classic.

All my life they looked down on me, always cursing and abusing. But you, you will be different!Bengal, 1903. Rumours that the British Empire plans to partition Bengal spread and uncertainty is never far away. For one Indian boy destiny is found on the banks of the River Padma before the Goddess Lakshmi. Here a promise is made. Born out of terror or kindness the choice Pipli makes that night will shape his life forever.In Tanika Gupta's adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Pipli moves from his home in Rajshahi to the bustling streets of Calcutta. With an open heart he navigates unforgiving darkness and unsettling friendships in his search for a better future. For Pipli, dharma - the right way of living, is never far away.This edition was published to coincide with the production by Tamasha in September, 2023.

In this deeply moving and life-affirming tale, a mother must nurture her five-year-old son through an unfathomable situation with only the power of their imagination and their boundless capacity to love.Written for the stage by Academy Award® nominee Emma Donoghue, this unique theatrical adaptation featuring songs and music by Kathryn Joseph and director Cora Bissett takes audiences on a richly emotional journey told through ingenious stagecraft, powerhouse performances, and heart-stopping storytelling. Room reaffirms our belief in humanity and the astounding resilience of the human spirit.This updated and revised edition was published to coincide with the Broadway premiere in Spring 2023.

I've been trying to remember a story.Can you help me?A long time ago our ancestors told it to us.I think it has to do with where we belong.In 2015, Mohegan Theater Maker Madeline Sayet travelled to England to pursue a PhD in Shakespeare, but her voyage across the ocean became an unexpected journey of transformation. Riding the spirit wind of her Mohegan ancestors who crossed the Atlantic in the 1700s on diplomatic missions to protect her people, Where We Belong is a search for belonging in a globalized world. It is at once a rich investigation into the impulses that divide and connect us as people, but it is also about a wolf that learns how to become a bird and fly.

Tracey Gordon, the 67 bus, friendship, sex, UK garage, school, music, teachers, friendship, periods, emergency contraceptive, arse and tits, friendship, raves, tampons, white boys, God, money. Friendship. Aaron, Candice, sex and Connor Jones. Chewing Gum Dreams is a one-woman play that recalls those last days of innocence before adulthood.Written and performed by Michaela Coel who spent her childhood in Hackney, London, Chewing Gum Dreams won the 2012 Alfred Fagon Award.

Two years after its disastrous opening in 1896, "The Seagull" was successfully revived at the Moscow Art Theatre. Checkhov's self-mocking description of the play was: "A comedy - 3F, 6M, four acts, rural scenery (a view over a lake); much talk of literature, little action, five bushels of love".

This new play explores Emilia Bassano, Shakespeare's `Dark Lady of the Sonnets' in her own right as poet, mother and feminist. For the first time, the focus will be on this brilliant woman who managed to outlive all the men the history books tethered her to. Introducing to the world: Emilia! She's going to make you remember her name.

Sometimes a person needs to create an act that destroys the world because the world is broken.The virus has ravaged Thebes. Millions are dead and the economy has tanked. Vaccinations have been administered and the Festival of Liberty is imminent. Things are finally about to change. The countdown is on but leader Creon and his quarantined niece, the self-identifying X'ntigone, have unfinished business before the celebrations can commence. What happens when old-world order meets a radical new world vision? In this thrilling meditation on Sophocles' timeless Greek tragedy, political expediency meets the voice of a generation who want to tear down the power structures that have ill-served a crumbling state.Darren Murphy's X'ntigone is a fresh and vital discourse for our times, when even truth has been sacrificed at the altar of political gain and avarice.

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne, divorced from one another five years previously, arrive coincidentally at the same French hotel. They are both honeymooning with their respective new spouses, but find that the old bond between them cannot be swept aside.

Young Marx is a comedy set in 1850's London, where Karl Marx, is hiding in Dean Street, Soho. Broke and restless, the play portrays the thirty-two-year-old revolutionary as a frothing combination of intellectual brilliance, invective, satiric wit, and child-like emotional illiteracy.Creditors, spies, rival revolutionary factions and prospective seducers of his beautiful wife all circle like vultures. His writing blocked, his marriage dying, his friend Engels in despair at his wasted genius, his only hope is a job on the railway. But there's still no one in the capital who can show you a better night on the piss than Karl Heinrich Marx.Young Marx aims to demystify Karl Marx, and is full of jokes and farce. It was chosen as the first play at the opening of London's Bridge Theatre in 2017, where it played to critical acclaim.

Life's full of clatter, but none of it matters, only who'll hold your paw when you die.What would you do if you lost an hour from your day? How far would you go to rescue what you've lost?In search of a lost hour that has tipped the balance of her life, Lisa Jones is on a quest through a surreal world, filled with insecurity guards, flying cars, singing polar bears and wild-goose chases. The inhabitants of Dissocia are a curious blend of the funny, the friendly and the downright brutal.Anthony Neilson's cult play is a poignant and comical delve into the nature of mental illness. This edition was published to coincide with the major London revival at Theatre Royal Stratford East in September 2022.

Boxers are like painters, both smear their blood on the canvas.New York, 1984. Fifty-six-year-old Andy Warhol's star is falling. Jean-Michel Basquiat is the new wonder-kid taking the art world by storm. When Basquiat agrees to collaborate with Warhol on a new exhibition, it soon becomes the talk of the city.As everyone awaits the 'greatest exhibition in the history of contemporary art', the two artists embark on a shared journey, both artistic and deeply personal, that re-draws both their worlds.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Young Vic Theatre in February 2022.

Winner of the 2022 Critics' Circle Award for Best New PlayNominated for the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Play"A man should never turn down two things. Sex, and appearing on television."1968 - a year of protest that divided America. As two men fight to become the next President, all eyes are on the battle between two others: the cunningly conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and the iconoclastic liberal Gore Vidal. Beliefs are challenged and slurs slung as these political idols feud nightly in a new television format, debating the moral landscape of a shattered nation. Little do they know they're about to open up a new frontier in American politics, and transform television news forever.Best of Enemies is the electric new play by James Graham (Quiz, Labour of Love), directed by Jeremy Herrin, inspired by the documentary by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon.This revised and updated edition was published to coincide with the West End transfer to the Noel Coward Theatre in November 2022.

Congratulations! Your pain is commercially viable.It's 1991 and the Gulf War rages three thousand, three hundred and twenty miles away. Darlee is 8 years old, crying behind the wheelie bookcase in Miss Stratford's classroom. She's just realised she's Iraqi. Or half. Maybe both. She saw it on the news last night after Neighbours and fish fingers. Heard the fear slipping through the receiver, saw it oozing from Dad's eyeballs and into the living room as he tried to phone home.What she can't process now, she'll be haunted by later; the spirits hounding her will make sure of that.Baghdaddy is a playfully devastating coming-of-age story, told through clowning and memory to explore the complexities of cultural identity, generational trauma and a father-daughter relationship amidst global conflict.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Royal Court Theatre in November 2022.

If I owned Durham, and I owned hell, I'd rent out Durham and I'd live in hell.Born in Denton Burn, Ric Renton had a troubled upbringing that led to him spending his young adulthood in prison. During a stint in solitary confinement, he declined a proffered Bible and on a whim, chanced it and asked for a dictionary instead. This choice afforded him an ability with language that would shape his life far beyond his station through writing. This is his story. Three young men Knox, Brown, and Shepherd pass their time in a prison with the highest suicide rate in the country. Energised by their friendship but with the walls around them getting smaller, haunted by the repeated pronouncements of another life lost, the arrival of a nightwatchman, Jock, offers Shepherd an unexpected way through the darkness. One Off is rich with emotion but sizzling with high energy and the blackest humour. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Live Theatre in Newcastle, in November 2022.