Elesin Oba, the King's Horseman, has a single destiny. When the King dies, he must commit ritual suicide and lead his King's favorite horse and dog through the passage to the world of the ancestors. A British colonial officer, Pilkings, intervenes.

"The action of the play is as inevitable and eloquent as in Antigone: a clash of values and cultures so fundamental that tragedy (ensues): a tragedy for each individual, each tribe."-Daily Telegraph

"This play, by the winner of aNobel Prize for Literature, asks: "On the authority of what gods" the white aliens rupture a world. It puts exciting political theatre back on the agenda ... a masterpiece of 20th century drama."-Guardian

Methuen Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; an interview with Wole Soyinka; and notes on individual words and phrases in the text.

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.

In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No one is more excited than Billy, an unloved and crippled boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. As news of his audacity ripples through his rumour-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order. With this bleak yet uproariously funny play, Martin McDonagh fulfilled the promise of his award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane while confirming his place in a tradition that extends from Synge to O'Casey and Brendan Behan. This Student Edition, complete with plot summary and scholarly notes, is edited by Dr. P.J. Mathews of University College Dublin.

Aristophanes's satirical masterpieces, immensely popular with the Athenian public, were frequently crude, even obscene. His plays revealed to his contemporaries, and now teach us today, that when those in power act obscenely, patriotic obscenity is a fitting response. Until now English translations have failed to capture Aristophanes's poetic genius. Aaron Poochigian, the first poet-classicist to tackle these plays in a generation, offers "effortlessly readable and genuinely theatrical" (Simon Armitage) versions of four of Aristophanes's most entertaining, provocative and lyrically ingenious comedies, finally giving twenty-first-century readers a sense of the subversive pleasure audiences felt when these works were first performed on the Athenian stage.

A Liverpudlian West Side Story: twin brothers are separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. She gives one of them away to wealthy Mrs Lyons and they grow up as friends in ignorance of their fraternity until the inevitable quarrel unleashes a blood-bath.

'Willy Russell is less concerned with political tub-thumping than with weaving a close-knit story about the working of fate and destiny ... it carries one along with it in almost unreserved enjoyment" "Guardian"

One of the longest-running and most successful ever West End musicals, "Blood Brothers" premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in January 1983.

Rehearsing Shakespeare offers a dynamic guide to practice in rehearsals and workshops for actors, directors and trainers in a UK and global context. The book analyses the roots and development of modern-day approaches to Shakespeare and applies theory of verse analysis to practical work, ranging from the drama student to the highest professional level in major global theatres. At the heart of the book are a series of carefully tested acting exercises, worked with professional actors and drama students across the world, both in English and in translation. Featuring several case studies from the author's own work and the work of others, it explores how acting and directing relate to design and other forms of artistic collaboration during Shakespeare production. An excellent resource for students and teachers of acting and directing courses, drama and English literature students at all levels, new professional actors and professional actors undertaking the exciting task of acting and directing Shakespeare at an international level, Rehearsing Shakespeare offers practical approaches to cutting and editing through to the core challenges of any Shakespearian play.

Shakespeare wrote for a theater in which the audience was understood to be, and at times invited to be, active and participatory. How have Shakespeare's audiences, from the sixteenth century to the present, responded to that invitation? In what ways have consumers across different cultural contexts, periods, and platforms engaged with the performance of Shakespeare's plays? What are some of the different approaches taken by scholars today in thinking about the role of Shakespeare's audiences and their relationship to performance? The chapters in this collection use a variety of methods and approaches to explore the global history of audience experience of Shakespearean performance in theater, film, radio, and digital media. The approaches that these contributors take look at Shakespeare's audiences through a variety of lenses, including theater history, dramaturgy, film studies, fan studies, popular culture, and performance. Together, they provide both close studies of particular moments in the history of Shakespeare's audiences and a broader understanding of the various, often complex, connections between and among those audiences across the long history of Shakespearean performance.

THISISPOPBABY & The Abbey Theatre present If These Wigs Could Talk by Panti Bliss If These Wigs Could Talk meets Panti, a drag queen at fifty-three, after a lifetime of showbiz, shenanigans and making a show of herself, taking this moment to question what her purpose and place in the world is now. Via salacious stories, impassioned polemics, some seriously funny soul searching and a few unvarnished truths, Panti takes us from rural Mayo to London's glittering West End ,to the Ambassador's residence in Vienna where, along the way, the answer to the question presents itself when she least expects it. Panti warmly invites you to learn from her mistakes, laugh at her failures and revel in her triumphs. Haunted by Tara Flynn What happens when you hit the floor and lose all of your marbles? Ask Tara Flynn: a fame-adjacent actor turned advocate for the campaign to Repeal Ireland's Eighth Amendment. The country voted Yes and the whirlwind of publicity and abuse came to an end, and crashing to the floor is where Tara found herself. Down there, she realised the whirlwind had conveniently kept her from dealing with the death of her dad. This is one woman's journey back from the floor. A funny, moving tale of grief, campaigning for civil rights, the offline impact of online abuse, crashing to the ground and fighting to tell your own story.

Mistero Buffo, or The Comic Mysteries, is based on research into mediaeval mystery plays; The Accidental Death of an Anarchist concerns the "accidental" (or not) death of an anarchist railwork who "fell" (or was pushed) to his death from a police headquarters window in 1969; Trumpets and Raspberries is "A deeply subversive farce" (The Guardian) in which the boss of Italy's biggest car manufacturer FIAT, is mistaken for a left wing terrorist.

"All is yours, everywhere is open to you - except the lock that the single key fits. You must promise, if you love me, to leave it well alone." When a 17 year old virgin marries a mature and charismatic Marquis it seems like a fairy tale. But when the Marquis is called away on their wedding night, leaving her only her only his keys and a single instruction, her curiosity leads her to uncover a dark secret. Bryony Lavery's new stage adaptation of Angela Carter's story opened as a Northern Stage production in September 2008.

My son is dead and sitting on the throne. 1605. Orthodox Russia stands alone, defiant against the Roman Catholic and Protestant West. The Kremlin has suppressed all opposition and keeps a ruthless grip on power with the support of the church and an appeal to nationalist sentiment. In Poland, a formidable young opponent appears: Dmitry. At his back a Polish army fuelled by fear of the Russian threat marches on Moscow. But is he who he thinks he is? An explosive new version of the great German writer Schiller's last, unfinished play - resurrected in the unique, pulsating dramatic verse of Peter Oswald, which premiered in the original production directed by Tim Supple. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Marylebone Theatre in London, in September 2022.

"It's not always children's stories that happen to children." When the men come to drive her away, Youmna cuts off Nour's hair. And so begins one girl's journey. By bus, by lorry, into the sound of gun-shots, through adolescence and across borders. The UK premiere of Estelle Savasta's critically acclaimed French play Traversee, Going Through is a bold play about the realities of child migration, combining English, BSL and Creative Captioning.

This new supernatural thriller is set in a theatre that has been closed for sixty years following the accidental death of a child during rehearsals for Murder by Poison, a Victorian thriller. Now Micky, the great-grandson of the theatre's original owner, has set about restoring the theatre to the glory of its former heyday, and to cap his plans he's intent on reviving the very same play to re-open the renovated theatre. Only Micky's elderly and eccentric father William knows the truth of what happened all those years ago. He tries to warn Micky that the play is doomed and urges him to abandon his plans, but Micky ignores the warning - and as rehearsals progress, unusual and mysterious occurrences begin to mount with deadly and terrifying consequences.

Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

There's a million in the middle - and they might go either way. On May 22nd, 2015, the people of Ireland voted resoundingly for marriage equality - making Ireland the first country in the world to introduce gay marriage by popular vote. Little about Ireland's 20th-century history suggested that the country would find itself at the vanguard of LGBT+ rights. "Homosexual conduct may lead a mildly homosexually-orientated person into a way of life from which he may never recover," warned the Irish Supreme Court in 1982. Homosexuality remained criminalised till 1993. But a long, hard fight by determined activists, as well as the individual efforts and sacrifices of thousands of ordinary people, gradually made the case for gay rights and, eventually, marriage equality. Colin Murphy's documentary drama, based on interviews by the journalist Charlie Bird, charts the arc of that fight - culminating in the fervour of the final campaign weeks - interwoven with the personal stories of some of those who were touched by it. This edition was published to coincide with the presentation of A Day in May at Dublin's Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, in October 2022.

The Absence of War offers a meditation on the classic problems of leadership, and is the third part of a critically acclaimed trilogy of plays (Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges) about British institutions. Its unsparing portrait of a Labour Party torn between past principles and future prosperity, and of a deeply sympathetic leader doomed to failure, made the play hugely controversial and prophetic when it was first presented at the National Theatre, London, in 1993. The Absence of War is much more than a piece of skilled reporting. It is actually cast as a classic tragedy.' Guardian

What is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of Home, an international collection of 11 plays by and about women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil, India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer. The "answer" includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their mother's death; a family wrestling with the government's refusal to allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young man fleeing home due to feel safety in his sexual orientation only to discover the difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite having lived in India for over 600 years. These are voices seldom represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces range from 20 to 90 minute pieces and include a mix of monologue, duologue and ensemble plays. Short yet powerful, they allow fantastic performance opportunities particularly in an age of social-distancing with flexible casts that together invite the theme of home to be performed and studied on the page. The plays include: The House by Arze Khodr (Lebanon), Happy by Kia Corthron (US), The Blue of the Island by Evelyne Trouillot (Haiti), Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK), Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela), Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda), On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine) Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (US), Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciacao (Brazil), So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (US), and Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)

Craig Higginson's first three plays for adult audiences - collected here in one volume - represent one of the strongest debuts in contemporary South African theatre. Although each can be seen as a variation on the theme of the post-apartheid state of the nation play, they are also engaged with realities in Zimbabwe, the Congo and contemporary Europe. Higginson's experience of growing up in wartorn Zimbabwe and apartheid South Africa have given him a deeprooted and potent angle from which to dramatize a dialogue between Europe and Africa. As British director Jeremy Herrin has noted in his Foreword: `The pairing of delicate psychology and considered plot allow the plays to move beyond the realism of their settings into a bespoke theatrical landscape, a place where the contradictions and messiness of contemporary life hold themselves up for inspection.'

The official script for the box-office smash movie, featuring every ruddy word (and stage direction) of Alan's seamless transformation from natural-born broadcaster into fully fledged and occasionally fully dressed hostage negotiator. Contains deleted scenes and an exclusive Foreword by Steve Coogan. With a television career behind him and a much-coveted breakfast slot in his spiritual home, regional digital radio, there was only one place left for Alan Partridge to turn: Hollywood! Or rather, an Anglo-French funded co-production for the big screen. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa sees Alan face his biggest challenge since he spent six months in a travel tavern, and is almost certainly the first time he has handled a loaded gun since he was a prime-time BBC2 presenter. When his beloved income-source North Norfolk Digital is taken over by a faceless media conglomerate, Alan's inimitable instinct for self-preservation leads to a violent and bloody siege on the radio station by an unhinged, nay mentalist, DJ, and a hostage crisis for which there can be only one man with the chat to diffuse it ... Featuring a cast of old and new Partridge favourites, including Sidekick Simon, assistant Lynn and Michael the Geordie, Alpha Papa is proof that while the jury's out on whether you can keep a good man down, it's an outright fact that you can't keep a good regional broadcaster off the airwaves.

Why the Theatre is a collection of 26 personal essays by college teachers, actors, directors, and playwrights about the magnetic pull of the theatre and its changing place in society. The book is divided into four parts, examining the creative role of the audience, the life of the actor, director, and playwright in performance, ways the theatre moves beyond the playhouse and into the real world, and theories and thoughts on what the theatre can do when given form onstage. Based on concrete, highly personal examples, experiences, and memories, this collection offers unique perspectives on the meaning of the theatre and the beauty of weaving the world of the play into the fabric of our lives. Covering a range of practices and plays, from the Greeks to Japanese Butoh theatre, from Shakespeare to modern experiments, this book is written by and for the theatre instructor and theatre appreciation student.

This collection explores the consequences of accentism-an under-researched issue that intersects with racism and classism-in the Shakespeare industry across languages and cultures, past and present. It adopts a transmedia and transhistorical approach to a subject that has been dominated by the study of "Original Pronunciation." Yet the OP project avoids linguistically "foreign" characters such as Othello because of the additional complications their "aberrant" speech poses to the reconstruction process. It also evades discussion of contemporary, global practices and, underpinning the enterprise, is the search for an aural "purity" that arguably never existed. By contrast, this collection attends to foreign speech patterns in both the early modern and post-modern periods, including Indian, East Asian, and South African, and explores how accents operate as "metasigns" reinforcing ethno-racial stereotypes and social hierarchies. It embraces new methodologies, which includes reorienting attention away from the visual and onto the aural dimensions of performance.