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Seven independent vignettes follow characters undergoing transformations associated with possession, madness, and violence. Each scene is punctuated by part of the tragedy of Pentheus, while Dionysos watches unseen; the ensemble returns at the end to describe what followed.
Salter confronts the consequences of having had a son cloned, as the young men he raised and their genetic counterparts struggle with identity, kinship, and the truth about their origins.
This two-part work pairs Heart’s Desire, in which a family repeatedly revises the scene of a daughter’s return from Australia, with Blue Kettle, in which Derek falsely tells several women that he is their adopted son. In Blue Kettle, words increasingly give way to “blue” and “kettle,” as the characters struggle to communicate.
A dramatic study of the hangers-on around abuse: in a shameless culture, the network of friends evades self-blame and accountability.
Act I Clive, a British colonial administrator, lives with his family, a governess and servant during turbulent times in Africa. The natives are rioting, and Mrs Saunders, a widow, comes to them to seek safety. Her arrival is soon followed by Harry Bagley, an explorer. Clive makes passionate advances to Mrs Saunders, his wife Betty fancies Harry, who secretly has sex with Joshua, and later with Clive's son, Edward. The governess Ellen, who reveals herself to be a lesbian, is forced into marriage with Harry after his sexuality is discovered and condemned by Clive. Act 1 ends with the wedding celebrations; the final scene of the first act ends with Clive giving a speech while Joshua, watched by Edward (who does nothing), aims his rifle at him and fires as the scene ends with a blackout. Act II Although Act II is set in 1979, some of the characters of Act I reappear – for them, only 25 years have passed. Betty has left Clive, her daughter Victoria is now married to an overbearing Martin, and Edward has an openly gay relationship with Gerry. Victoria, upset and distant from Martin, starts a lesbian relationship with Lin. When Gerry leaves Edward, Edward, who discovers he is in fact bisexual, moves in with his sister and Lin. The three of them have a drunken ceremony in which they call up the Goddess, after which characters from Act I begin appearing. Act II has a looser structure, and Churchill played around with the ordering of the scenes. The final scene shows that Victoria has left Martin for a polyamorous relationship with Edward and Lin, and they are sharing custody of their son Tommy. Gerry and Edward are on good terms again, and Betty becomes friends with Gerry, who tells her about Edward's sexuality.
Two men, Sam and Jack, conduct an elliptical, fragmented dialogue as homosexual lovers. Sam represents the United States government and its advocacy of hegemony and intervention; Jack begins as an enthusiastic follower but grows disillusioned. Their intimate relationship stages a critique of American power, especially since the Vietnam War.
Seven independent vignettes follow characters undergoing transformations associated with possession, madness, and violence. Each scene is punctuated by part of the tragedy of Pentheus, while Dionysos watches unseen; the ensemble returns at the end to describe what followed.
Salter confronts the consequences of having had a son cloned, as the young men he raised and their genetic counterparts struggle with identity, kinship, and the truth about their origins.
This two-part work pairs Heart’s Desire, in which a family repeatedly revises the scene of a daughter’s return from Australia, with Blue Kettle, in which Derek falsely tells several women that he is their adopted son. In Blue Kettle, words increasingly give way to “blue” and “kettle,” as the characters struggle to communicate.
A dramatic study of the hangers-on around abuse: in a shameless culture, the network of friends evades self-blame and accountability.
Act I Clive, a British colonial administrator, lives with his family, a governess and servant during turbulent times in Africa. The natives are rioting, and Mrs Saunders, a widow, comes to them to seek safety. Her arrival is soon followed by Harry Bagley, an explorer. Clive makes passionate advances to Mrs Saunders, his wife Betty fancies Harry, who secretly has sex with Joshua, and later with Clive's son, Edward. The governess Ellen, who reveals herself to be a lesbian, is forced into marriage with Harry after his sexuality is discovered and condemned by Clive. Act 1 ends with the wedding celebrations; the final scene of the first act ends with Clive giving a speech while Joshua, watched by Edward (who does nothing), aims his rifle at him and fires as the scene ends with a blackout. Act II Although Act II is set in 1979, some of the characters of Act I reappear – for them, only 25 years have passed. Betty has left Clive, her daughter Victoria is now married to an overbearing Martin, and Edward has an openly gay relationship with Gerry. Victoria, upset and distant from Martin, starts a lesbian relationship with Lin. When Gerry leaves Edward, Edward, who discovers he is in fact bisexual, moves in with his sister and Lin. The three of them have a drunken ceremony in which they call up the Goddess, after which characters from Act I begin appearing. Act II has a looser structure, and Churchill played around with the ordering of the scenes. The final scene shows that Victoria has left Martin for a polyamorous relationship with Edward and Lin, and they are sharing custody of their son Tommy. Gerry and Edward are on good terms again, and Betty becomes friends with Gerry, who tells her about Edward's sexuality.
Two men, Sam and Jack, conduct an elliptical, fragmented dialogue as homosexual lovers. Sam represents the United States government and its advocacy of hegemony and intervention; Jack begins as an enthusiastic follower but grows disillusioned. Their intimate relationship stages a critique of American power, especially since the Vietnam War.
Four older women talk over afternoon tea in a garden while Mrs Jarrett’s monologues open onto visions of catastrophe. Everyday conversation, personal disquiet, and imagined global disasters overlap in Churchill’s dark comedy.
As a child, Joan discovers her uncle secretly transporting injured people. Years later, she designs hats for prisoners in a society that turns executions into public spectacle; eventually, she fears that every part of nature may be at war.
In the English Fens, rural women farmworkers struggle with poverty, abusive labor relations, and constrained lives. Val leaves her family for farmer Frank but cannot reconcile love with her guilt and financial hardship; she ultimately asks him to kill her. The play unfolds through brief scenes and intersecting character portraits.
Four short plays explore the fragility and anxieties of modern life through distinct dramatic modes: a mysterious, resistant-to-interpretation Glass; Kill’s use of ancient revenge violence to frame modern murder; Bluebeard’s Friends’ culture of self-exculpating hangers-on; and Imp’s portrait of ordinary people turning against outsiders and fearing the unfamiliar.
A short meditation on death and aging, the play includes a funeral scene and later reflects on the indignities of sickness and old age before a dialogue-free finale.
An unsettling portrait of a fractured world where well-meaning people can suddenly turn against outsiders and fear everything; it also suggests the force of bottled-up desire, violence, and need for companionship.
A contemporary play invokes ancient Greek revenge killings and brutal deities to examine how violence lies at the heart of Western civilization and how modern killers can appear charming.
Set during the English Civil War, the play dramatizes the Putney Debates and the ideals of Diggers, Levellers and Ranters, contrasting their political hopes with the pragmatism of Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.
A sequence of seven ordered sections contains more than one hundred short scenes about how people form connections and make sense of the world. Vignettes within each section can be rearranged, and additional scenes can be inserted, leaving directors and performers to shape the work’s themes.
Three acts follow a Romanian family and community shortly before, during, and after the 1989 revolution. The first and third acts are dramatic fictions; the middle act draws on interviews and shifts among witnesses to the events in Bucharest.
A satire of property rights, real estate owners, and the people who live in rented accommodation, criticizing the culture that treats property-owning entrepreneurs as heroes.
The plot follows Scilla and Jake who are enjoying the pleasures and the comforts of the upper class. But the story climaxes when Jake Todd turns up murdered during the first few scenes due to his underground trading. Scilla takes it upon herself to find her brother's killer and the money he was dealing. She later finds out that he was being investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry. Though she does not find the killer, she finds the American business woman Marylou Banes with whom Jake was dealing. Marylou Banes offers her a fresh start. The story takes place around the stock market troubles in Britain. Aside from that a second story follows Billy Corman's and Zac Zackerman's attempt to take over the Albion company from Duckett. In between this takeover Corman attempts to get Jacinta Condor and Nigel Ajibala [who are the foreigners with an interest in his takeover] to buy shares in his company. They support Corman but decide to give their bid to Duckett in the end. The plot ends with Greville Todd in jail, Corman appointed as a Lord, and Scilla happily working for Marylou Banes.
In a seven-scene litany spanning roughly seventy years, adults debate what to tell children about the Holocaust and the Israeli–Arab conflict, culminating in the 2008–09 Gaza war. Repeated commands to “tell her” and “don’t tell her” frame a struggle to protect children while confronting violence.
Selby leaves a corporate job for charity work, where campaigns are repeatedly blocked by political interests. After her colleague's efforts to promote hard-hitting but inoffensive appeals fail, Selby travels to a hurricane-struck country and is kidnapped by guerrillas; comic sketches expose the contradictions of charitable fundraising.
A shape-shifting ancient fairy befriends, manipulates and pursues Lily and Josie, two teenage mothers. Its broken, punning language and changing forms draw them into a sinister world of love, loss and revenge, while the play explores postnatal psychosis and possession through a dark, fragmentary fairy tale.
Career-driven Marlene celebrates her promotion over dinner with women from history and fiction, whose stories reveal the costs of ambition. In the modern office and family scenes, Marlene’s troubled niece Angie visits, and a later family confrontation reveals Marlene is Angie’s mother, who left her in her sister Joyce’s care.
Alice and her mother Joan are accused of witchcraft by neighbors who interpret their economic, marital, and agricultural misfortunes as evidence of the supernatural. The play uses the 17th-century trials to examine gender, power, and the scapegoating of poor, nonconforming women; contemporary songs interrupt the historical scenes.