British theatre of the 1990s witnessed an explosion of new talent and presented a new sensibility that sent shockwaves through audiences and critics. What produced this change, the context from which the work emerged, the main playwrights and plays, and the influence they had on later work are freshly evaluated in this important new study in Methuen Drama's Decades of Modern British Playwriting series. The 1990s volume provides a detailed study by four scholars of the work of four of the major playwrights who emerged and had a significant impact on British theatre: Sarah Kane (by Catherine Rees), Anthony Neilson (Patricia Reid), Mark Ravenhill (Graham Saunders) and Philip Ridley (Aleks Sierz). Essential for students of Theatre Studies, the series of six decadal volumes provides a critical survey and study of the theatre produced from the 1950s to 2009. Each volume features a critical analysis of the work of four key playwrights besides other theatre work, together with an extensive commentary on the period. Readers will understand the works in their contexts and be presented with fresh research material and a reassessment from the perspective of the twenty-first century. This is an authoritative and stimulating reassessment of British playwriting in the 1990s.

If you could cure thousands of a fatal disease by experimenting on a single child, would you do it? That's the question posed by the narrator of this story, their personal complicity in the experience a slippery possibility.

The ground-breaking debut from one of the most important playwrights of the last decade, now in an acting edition. "Shopping and Fucking is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings ...a real coup de theatre" Nicholas de Jongh, EVENING STANDARD "Plunges you into the world of disposability, disconnection and dysfunction, where relationships to be trusted have to be reduced to transactions ...strong stuff" Paul Taylor, INDEPENDENT "Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation" TIME OUT

Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat is an epic cycle of plays exploring the personal and political effect of war on modern life. The plays that make up Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat began life at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as Ravenhill for Breakfast (produced by Paines Plough), winning a Fringe First award, and the Jack Tinker Spirit of the Fringe award. They form a collage of very different scenes, with each taking its title from a classic work. The plays were presented in April 2008 in various venues across London, from Notting Hill to a Victorian warehouse in Shoreditch, via Sloane Square and the South Bank. Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat was originally developed in association with the National Theatre Studio and Paines Plough, and was first produced as Ravenhill for Breakfast at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in August 2007 by Paines Plough, with the support of David Johnson.

Scenes from Family Life is a charged and punchy play about relationships and the last two people left on earth. Lisa and Jack are teenagers, but they are about to become adults; Lisa is pregnant, and neither of them can wait for the baby to arrive and their lives to start. But then Lisa vanishes - into thin air. Jack panics until she comes back, but then she disappears again, and then it turns out that everyone is dematerialising, all over the planet people are disappearing. Quickly, the only people left in the world are Jack and his heavily pregnant friend Stacy. Jack adjusts to the silent and primitive world; but for Stacey it begins to turn into a nightmare. And when the vanished start to return, Jack has to learn how complex adult relationships are.

Olivia is a hot young starlet. Now all she needs is the script which will save her from B movie hell, a script which balances artistic integrity with blockbuster bucks. James thinks he's got the perfect pitch - a script which combines a torrid love story with the dark spectre of terrorism and big, big explosions. If he can only persuade Olivia, he's got the perfect Product.

A famous artist invites her old friends to her luxurious new home. For one night only, the group is back together. But celebrations come to an abrupt end when the host suffers an horrific accident. As the victim lies in a coma, an almost unthinkable plan starts to take shape: could her suffering be their next work of art? Pool (No Water) is a visceral and shocking new play about the fragility of friendship and the jealousy and resentment inspired by success.

When Franz's mother escaped to the West with one of her identical twin boys, she left the other behind. Now, twenty-five years later, Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn, the brothers must struggle to reconnect. Mark Ravenhill's visceral play examines the hungers released when two countries, separated by a common language, meet again.

It's London 1726, and Mrs. Tull's got problems. The whores are giving her a hard time, a man in a dress is looking for a job, her husband has a roving eye and the apprentice boy keeps disappearing for 'a wander'. Meanwhile in 2001 a group of wealthy gay men are preparing for a raunchy party. Mother Clap's Molly House, is a black comedy with songs is a celebration of the diversity of human sexualtiy, an exploration of our need to form families and a fascinatig insight into a hidden chapter in London's history.

Twenty-eight years before The Importance of Being Earnest, a young woman gives birth to a baby boy. Is it an accident when the Nanny places him in a handbag and her unpublished novel into the pram? In 1998 a new baby is stolen and an academic discovers an unpublished novel of more than usual revolting sentimentality. From Victorian wet nurses to 90s sperm banks, Mark Ravenhill's play examines the role of parenting in an age of diverse sexualities, biological engineering and Tinky Winky's handbag.

Taking inspiration from Oedipus and Chilean children who were taken from their biological parents to support the Pinochet regime, Golden Child follows a young man's journey discovering that the people he knew to be his parents his whole life are not actually his parents.

Lisa has breast cancer. Meryl is a healer who believes in the power of positive thinking. As time folds back on itself and then forwards, Lisa and Meryl trade roles as the healer and the healed, discovering that the world is full of ghosts.

Candide is an optimist. A dreamer. He believes that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But that belief is about to be tested as Candide's comfortable life is overtaken by an endless barrage of misfortune. As his world collapses around him, the story travels across the centuries to new locations and parallel universes. How will Candide's optimism fare when it collides with life in the 21st century? The play is structured around two parallel narratives: one tells the story of Candide's attempts to reunite with his love Cunegonde; the other follows a woman who experiences a hugely traumatic event as she attempts to find a way back to happiness.

Arguably Brecht's greatest play, A Life of Galileo charts the seventeenth century scientist's extraordinary fight with the church over his assertion that the earth orbits the sun. The figure of Galileo, whose 'heretical' discoveries about the solar system brought him to the attention of the Inquisition, is one of Brecht's more human and complex creations. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. Brecht's beautiful depiction of the explosive struggle between scientific discovery and religious fundamentalism is captured masterfully in this new translation by RSC writer-in-residence, Mark Ravenhill.

"Citizenship" was performed at the National Theatre in 2006 as part of the NT Shell Connections programme. A lively, funny and outspoken drama, it focuses on teenager Tom, who dreams of kissing someone but can't tell whether that someone is female or male. Is he gay? And can anyone help him to find out? "Gay Gary", his stoner schoolfriend, turns out to be gay by nickname only; deClerk, the young Citizenship teacher, is gay but stressed out and professionally cautious and cannot help; Amy, Tom's self-harming, unhappy best friend, has sex with him as an experiment...and then Tom meets Martin, who helps him to answer some questions while raising many others.

The four boyfriends, with the help of the members of their school's drama class, set up a witty scenario designed to fool the girls into thinking that they should never have called off their relationships - because one day soon the lads will be the world-famous boyband Awesome. The current obsession with celebrity is satirized with the lightest of touches in this intelligent comedy for teenagers.7 women, 7 men

Paul is an ordinary man with a shocking secret. At home, he is a loving husband and father. At work, he administers the cut. In a society sickened by his profession, Paul struggles with his conscience and longs to tell the truth.

With an introduction by Graham Whybrow, literary manager of the Royal Court Theatre, this anthology collects the defining plays of the 1980s and 1990s in one volume - Top Girls 'The best British play ever from a woman dramatist' (The Guardian) Hysteria 'One of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years' (The Sunday Times) Blasted 'Her dialogue is both sparse and stunning. They will call her mad, but then they said that about Strindberg' (Mail on Sunday) Shopping and F***ing 'A real coup de theatre' (Evening Standard) The Beauty Queen of Leenane 'The most wickedly funny, brilliantly abrasive young dramatist ...a born storyteller' (New York Times)The result is a collection of "must reads" that's excellent value for students and theatre fans alike.

A famous artist invites her old friends to her luxurious new home. For one night only, the group is back together. But celebrations come to an abrupt end when the host suffers an horrific accident. As the victim lies in a coma, an almost unthinkable plan starts to take shape: could her suffering be their next work of art? Pool (No Water) is a visceral and shocking new play about the fragility of friendship and the jealousy and resentment inspired by success.

A famous artist invites her old friends out to her luxurious new home and, for one night only, the group is back together. However, celebrations come to an abrupt end when the host suffers an horrific accident.
As the victim lies in a coma, an almost unthinkable plan starts to take shape: could her suffering be their next work of art? The group is ecstatic in its new found project until things slip out of their control and, to the surprise of all, the patient awakes?
"pool (no water)" is a visceral and shocking new play about the fragility of friendship and the jealousy and resentment inspired by success.
"Citizenship "is a bittersweet comedy about growing up, following a boy's frank and messy search to discover his sexual identity. It was developed as part of the National Theatre Shell Connections 2005 Programme

'...the history of this pub, the possibilities of what once could have happened in this room in which we're now gathered ... Well. The possibilities'. Written as a response to the 50th anniversary celebration of the King's Head Theatre, Mark Ravenhill premieres his first new play as Artistic Director. Drawing on the traditions of a classic ghost story, The Haunting of Susan A explores the power of the mind to make the unseen visible and for the cruelty of the past to haunt a room. Described as "a ghost story", the play is Inspired by Ravenhill's love of the work of M.R. James and is set in the King's Head Theatre itself. Published alongside an introduction from Timberlake Wertenbaker, this text also includes Ravenhill's '101 notes on Playwriting', which caused a sensation on Twitter and appears in print for the first time.

Mark Ravenhill has established himself as one of the most important playwrights to emerge from the 1990s. Provocative, dark, witty and satirical, his plays consistently probe the debased culture of our times. This second volume of plays brings together five plays from 2001-07. It includes Mother Clap's Molly House, a black comedy and celebration of human sexuality that premiered at the National Theatre in 2001; Citizenship, a bitter-sweet comedy about growing up that was developed by the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2005; The Cut, a disturbing political fable that opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006; Product, Ravenhill's one man satire on the media industry that since its premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005, has been produced around the world, and Pool (no water), a shocking examination of the fragility of friendship and the jealousy and resentment inspired by success. The volume features an introduction by the author and a chronology of his work.

Mark Ravenhill's autobiographical radio play explores the way culture, high and low, impacted both his mother's and his family's lives. Starting an adult ballet class as the only male in the group sparks a memory of life through the eyes of Ravenhill, the playwright. As time intertwines through alternating perspectives we see his family at different stages of their life. From childhood dreams of being a dancer and performer through to the creativity that brings his parents together for the first time and into their old age, this is a deeply personal and resonate drama about the intersects of life and culture. Commissioned by Sound Stage, a new immersive audio theatre, designed by theatre-makers and leading technologists, giving audiences a unique and engrossing online theatre experience of new plays from the best in British theatre.

Drawing together the work of 12 leading playwrights, this National Theatre Connections anthology celebrates highlights from 21 years of the Connections festival with a retrospective selection of plays. Featuring work by some of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries, and together in one volume, the anthology offers young performers between the ages of 13 and 19 an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play has been specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department over the years, with the young performer in mind. In 2016, these plays were then performed by approximately 500 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional partner regional theatres at which the works were showcased. The anthology contains all 12 of the play scripts; notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play; and production notes and exercises for the drama groups. This year's anniversary anthology includes plays by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt; Simon Armitage; Jackie Kay; Patrick Marber; Mark Ravenhill; Bryony Lavery & Frantic Assembly; Davey Anderson; James Graham; Katori Hall; Carl Grose; Stacey Gregg; and Lucinda Coxon.

"Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation" Time Out "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill ...He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism." - Financial Times Shopping and Fucking: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings ...a real coup de theatre" - Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Faust: "...an intelligent and witty reappropriation of the legend ...alive, pertinent and disturbing" - Michael Coveney, Observer Handbag: "...combines urban grit with sly wit, and reveals Mark Ravenhill as a writer of real daring" - Daily Telegraph Some Explicit Polaroids: "laudably ambitious, pulsates with energy ...very funny" - Financial Times