The first and only book to survey the canon of Irish drama, from an inclusive and international perspective. Aimed specifically at undergraduate students covering Irish drama, either as part of broader studies in modern drama or a specific degree unit. No other books currently available deal with the Irish canon.

I believed that Fukayama line: the end of history. But History didn't end, did it? Logan Dankworth, columnist and Twitter warrior, grew up romanticising the political turmoil of the 1980s. Now, as the EU Referendum looms he is determined to be in the fray of the biggest political battle for years. Meanwhile, Logan's wife Megan wants to leave London to better raise their daughter. As tensions rise at home and across the nation, something is set to be lost forever. The third of Luke Wright's trilogy of political verse plays looks at trust and privilege in the age of Brexit. "Poet Luke Wright doesn't mince his words. His performances rumble with rage, passion and humour. They are also peppered with brilliantly smart observations. You will leave his show brimming with energy, heart pounding and brain whirring." The Guardian

Premiered at the Royal National Theater, this extraordinary new play by one of Britain's leading playwrights combines English folk tales with modern urban life. In terms of its language alone, it is as exciting and challenging on the page as on the stage.

The play follows the Skriker, 'a shapeshifter and death portent, ancient and damaged', in its search for love and revenge as it pursues two young women to London, changing its shape at every new encounter. Along with the Skriker come Raw head and bloody bones, the Kelpie, the Green Lady, Black Dog and more, till the whole country is swarming with enticing and angry creatures that have burst from the underworld.

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play deals with the horror and futility of trench warfare, as Captain Stanhope and his officers await attack in their dugout.

Dress by Ganni. Bra by Coco de Mer. Knife by Stanley. A gripping revenge tale about an actress in her 40s under investigation for the murder of an auteur theatre director whilst rehearsing a stage production of Hitchcock's Psycho. A whip-smart take on what it means to be middle-aged and female in an industry captivated by stardust and beauty. This edition was published to coincide with the run at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2022.

Winner of New Diorama, Underbelly and Methuen Drama's Untapped Award 2022 Sometimes I'm afraid of this play. Malta: Catholic kitsch, golden sun, deep blue sea, Eurovision - and a blanket ban on abortion. Propelled by three years of interviews with anonymous contributors and their own lived experience, actors and activists Marta and Davinia interrogate Malta's restrictions on the freedom of women. What does it mean for your home to boast the world's most progressive LGBTQIA+ rights, leading transgender laws - and a population that is almost unanimously anti-choice? Blanket Ban is a rallying cry from award-winning Chalk Line Theatre. This edition was published to coincide with the production at Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, in August 2022.

Winner of New Diorama, Underbelly and Methuen Drama's Untapped Award 2022 A new Caligari comes to life - accompanied by a five-piece band. Embracing the long shadows and broad brushstrokes of German expressionism, Caligari exposes parallels between post-war Weimar and the UK today: an ever-widening class divide, a subconscious need for a tyrant, and an unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority. The doctor's victims take centre stage in this minty-fresh take on the German horror cult-classic, written by Georgie Bailey and presented by Off West End Award-winning ChewBoy Productions. This edition was published to coincide with the production at Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, in August 2022.

Martin McDonagh's plays have been produced in Galway, Dublin, London and New York. They have created excitement and have won numerous awards. In individual editions the plays have been among Methuen's most popular sellers. 'Martin McDonagh's The Leenane Trilogy, one of the great events of the contemporary Irish theatre' (Irish Times). This volume contains: The Beauty Queen of Leenane - 'McDonagh's writing is pitiless but compassionate: he casts a cold, hard, but understanding eye on relationships made of mistrust, hesitation, resentment and malevolence' (Sunday Times); A Skull in Connemara - 'Here, McDonagh's gift is at its most naked and infectious ...it leaves you giddy with gruesome exhilaration' (Financial Times); The Lonesome West: 'The play combines manic energy and physical violence in a way that is both hilarious and viscerally exciting' (Daily Telegraph)"A star is born, bright and blazing, confident, individual and shockingly accomplished" (Sunday Times)

In the town of Slurry, New York, post-war recession has bitten. Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world's richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price... Friedrich Durrenmatt's visionary revenge play, one of the great achievements of modern German-language theatre, has been transported to mid-twentieth-century America by the acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner. This revelatory new adaptation of The Visit opened in the Olivier auditorium of the National Theatre, London, in February 2020, directed by Jeremy Herrin, and starring Lesley Manville and Hugo Weaving.

The first and only book to survey the canon of Irish drama, from an inclusive and international perspective. Aimed specifically at undergraduate students covering Irish drama, either as part of broader studies in modern drama or a specific degree unit. No other books currently available deal with the Irish canon.

"Everyone is constructing themselves. I'm just conscious of doing it. More than that, I'm a sculptor of it. I am a fucking artist." Finalist: Popcorn Writing Award 2021 Alex is a social success. Her Instagram boasts a montage of members-only rooftops, inexplicably sunny days and clinking glasses - like after like after like! When her father dies, Alex reluctantly joins a bereavement group. She shares a little, and then lies... a lot. And it feels good - like the 'likes', but live, and just like that, Alex is hooked. Please, Feel Free to Share by Rachel Causer is a dynamic, darkly comic, one-woman show about our personal addictions, the never-ending pursuit of 'likes' and our growing desire to share all. This play was developed by Scatterjam, a female-led production company that are committed to creating innovative shows that actively challenge commonly held preconceptions and celebrate the comedic potential of doing so. They are the makers of the Offie-Nominated play When It Happens.

Multi-award-winning Scottish playwright Kieran Hurley has been making waves since the early 2010s with his vivid storytelling and searing honesty, creating plays acutely concerned with society and community, and deeply enmeshed in Scotland's local political context. Tracking the evolution of Hurley's work from his early solo shows to his later large-cast plays and featuring an introduction by Scottish theatre critic Joyce McMillan, this is an exciting collection showcasing one of the UK's most exciting creators of politically-engaged theatre. The plays collected are: Hitch (2010): a previously unpublished solo show about Hurley's hitchhiking trip to the 2009 G8 meeting in L'Aquila, exploring the meaning of political protest. Beats (2012): a coming-of-age story exploring the aftermath of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act outlawing raves. It was adapted into a film in 2019, garnering nominations for BIFA Best Debut Screenplay and WGGB Best Screenplay. Heads Up (2016): a ferocious piece of storytelling asking what we would do if we found ourselves at the end of our world as we know it. (Winner of the Fringe First Award 2016.) Mouthpiece (2018): an unflinching Edinburgh-centric two-hander which examines whether it's possible to tell someone else's story without exploiting them along the way. (Winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award 2019.) The Enemy (2021): a provocative and timely drama offering a uniquely Scottish take on Henrik Ibsen's timeless work An Enemy of the People.

"I'm walking down the street and there's a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I've seen before." Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe. Caryl Churchill's play Escaped Alone premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2016, in a production directed by James Macdonald. It was named Best Play at the 2017 Writers' Guild Awards.

Some guys listen to music, some guys like to sing. I like to work people out. Rainer is a solitary delivery rider, moving across London, delivering food to whoever will summon her. From luxury flats to leafy suburbs, she loves to create stories in her head, re-imagining London as one of her favourite sci-fi films or Scorsese's Taxi Driver. She loves her life. Until reality starts to slip and she begins forgetting stuff - even the city she knows so well. And when her one-time lover Jack disappears, when her mum keeps on calling, she has to ask herself: is everything really okay? A one-woman show partly inspired by Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood, Rainer is a celebration of a city and the people within it, seen and unseen. It was a finalist for Samuel French's Off-Broadway Award, longlisted for Theatre Uncut's Political Playwriting Award and winner of the Prix Royal competition in Paris. This edition was published to coincide with the production at the Arcola Theatre, London, in June 2022.

In Salford alone, 34,000 children are caring for someone. Adapted from real-life testimonies, this bold and pertinent piece of documentary theatre examines our failing care system, the impact of austerity and what happens when a child becomes the parent. Jade, Connor and Nicole all care for parents and siblings. They must juggle school and homework with caring for family members, making appointments, collecting prescriptions and running the home. Their hidden lives of caring have impacted their education, social life and health. Their testimonies are woven together, alongside those of social workers and parents, in this hard-hitting play. "It's tear-jerking throughout - accidents, abuse, disability, depression and suicide, all born on the backs of teenagers - and infuriating, too. Woodhead's script, filleted from interviews with real people who really faced these issues, points the finger squarely at austerity and its crippling effects on local councils and the services they can provide." (The Stage) A gripping verbatim theatre production based on a year of interviews that offers a rare insight into a year in the lives of young carers.

Winner of the Noel Coward Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy at the 2020 Olivier Awards In 1611 Emilia Bassano wrote a volume of radical, feminist and subversive poetry. It was one of the first published collections of poetry written by a woman in England. The little we know of Emilia Bassano is restricted to the possibility that she may have been the 'Dark Lady' of Shakespeare's Sonnets - and the rest of HerStory has been erased by History. Morgan has taken what we know of Bassano, and her poetry, to create this lively, witty play.

'I can see her just. Most people can't see her at all.' A girl made of glass. Gods and murders. A serial killer's friends. And a secret in a bottle. Four stories by Caryl Churchill. Glass, Kill, Bluebeard, and Imp premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2019.

'So I thought, since we can't do Europe this summer, why don't the kids and I just do a little Southern History road trip? We're going to drive back home through Mississippi, Louisiana - all those places - experience some of Daddy's heritage.' The Lafayette family gather at their late father's home in Arkansas to bury the hatchet and prepare the former plantation for its Estate Sale. Until, that is, they make a discovery which changes everything. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate is a gripping play about ghosts and the legacies we are left with, and a wickedly subversive appropriation of the great American family drama. Appropriate premiered Off-Broadway in 2014, and won the Obie Award for Best New American Play. It had its UK premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in August 2019, directed by Ola Ince and featuring Monica Dolan. This edition also features his short play I Promise Never Again to Write Plays About Asians...

When an unhappy estate agent sells a house to Alice, a charismatic social media influencer, the two strike up an unlikely friendship. But as her obsession with Alice's seemingly perfect world intensifies, the lines between online and reality become dangerously blurred. A thrilling, twisted and razor-sharp comedy on the corrosive effects of social media and isolation, Phoebe Eclair-Powell's play Harm premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in May 2021.

It's Cabaret, we've got our heads down and we're dancing and drinking as fast as we can. The enemy is on its way, but this time it doesn't have guns and gas it has storms and earthquakes, fire and brimstone.... You were the glimmer. At the end of the tunnel. And you went out. Earthquakes in London is a fast and furious metropolitan crash of people, scenes and decades, as three sisters attempt to navigate their dislocated lives and loves, while their dysfunctional father, a brilliant scientist, predicts global catastrophe. The play deals, through amplified theatricality, with a range of contemporary issues from population growth to climate change. An all-pervasive fear of the future and a guilty pleasure in the excesses of the present drive Mike Bartlett's epic rollercoaster of a play from 1968 to 2525 and back again. Earthquakes in London first published in 2010 and has subsequently become a much-produced and widely studied drama text. It is published here as a Student Edition alongside commentary and notes by Bridget Escolme. The ancillary material is geared at students and includes: - an introduction outlining the play's plot, character, themes context and performance history - the full text of the play - a chronology of the playwright's life and work - extensive textual notes - questions for further study - an interview with the playwright

All the world's a stage. Have you ever been trapped in a bad relationship, playing a role that doesn't suit you? Jen and Sam are also trapped ... in a multiverse of Shakepeare's complete works. On their quest to discover the doorway back to reality they notice something unusual about Henry 'Hotspur' Percy. Now Jen and Sam must decide; do they risk losing their way home to help someone who might be like them - someone who does not yet know who she truly is? The Prince is a sharp new play that weaves through Henry IV Part One and other of the Bard's works, providing fun for the audience whether they be Shakespeare scholars or verse virgins. With sword fighting, lesbianism, and disappointed parents, this thrilling new work was written by Abigail Thorn, celebrated creator of Philosophy Tube. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Southwark Playhouse, in September 2022.