The hope is what matters.In a disused bunker on the edge of an imaginary city in the aftermath of an apocalypse, Ashton and Reece have spent years looking for hope in the stories they act out. And then one day, from nowhere, a stranger arrives. He has a generator. He has fresh meat. And he has a gun.The staggering new play from Tony and Olivier award-winning playwright Simon Stephens is part thriller, part excavation of the soul.This edition was published t...

I drank three glasses of scotch and ginger ale before we'd even cleared Coney Island. I didn't want to come home. It was then that I decided to write you these letters.On a crisp winter day in New York, Willem gets the call. It's Mum. Pauli's died. Come back to Amsterdam.An unforgettable homecoming to an estranged family, a lost love, unsettling sex and an unexamined life.One of Stephens's most poetic plays to date, Song from Far Away received its ...

I kept telling myself I wanted something more out of my life, something brighter. I had all these ideas in my head. Thing is, I had to go down so low just to try to lift my life up a little bit higher.Simon Stephens's exciting new adaptation of the twentieth-century classic Kasimir and Karoline is a dark, political and hilarious play that sets two young lovers in the throes of a break-up against the hypnotic whirl and bright lights of a funfair.The Fun...

Fatherland is a bold, ambitious show about contemporary fatherhood in all its complexities and contradictions. Created by Frantic Assembly's Scott Graham, Karl Hyde from Underworld and playwright Simon Stephens (Punk Rock, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), this daring collage of words, music and movement confronts the complexities and contradictions of contemporary fatherhood.A vivid, urgent and deeply personal portrait of 21st-century England at...

“t was then that I decided to write you these letters.One crisp winter day in New York, Willem receives a phone call – it's time to go home.Home to Amsterdam – to an estranged family and forgotten relationships. As he reflects on his life, unwilling to face the future, he finds himself reaching out to the brother he has lost.This revised edition of Simon Stephens's landmark play, is published to coincide with the revival at HOME Manchester, February 2023, st...

The funny thing is the harder I work the more clearly I understand things. When I'm worn out after a day's work then it's like my brain relaxes. And sometimes then I get it. The meaning of my life. My purpose on this earth. How many people ever get to say that? And you know what? It doesn't matter. Doesn't change anything. It is not important.In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - arguably his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces deeply rooted in history an...

I have kind of become invisible. Nobody looks at me. Not like they used to. You reach an age. Like my age and people stop looking at you. They stop checking you out.In Greenwich Village a generation or so ago, the city is alive. Joni Mitchell sings, friends and lovers come and go, and the regulars change at the White Horse Tavern.As 50 years pass, one woman's life is revealed in all its complexity, mystery and possibility in this enthralling world premiere about mo...

Don't panic.Don't be scared.This must feel strange to you.It felt strange to me…From quiet sorrows to breathtaking beauty, the mystery of human experience unfolds before you. In An Ark, four guides shepherd you into an understanding of the human condition, encompassing the joy of first love and the inevitability of death.The first play created for mixed reality, this genre-defying collaboration between Tony A...

I want, one more time, to be absolutely in the moment . . .I am going to try as hard as I can to not be a human being.A series of suggestions on desire, death and time.Nuclear War is the searing result of a groundbreaking and form-defying collaboration between Simon Stephens and the choreographer and movement director Imogen Knight, developed by Actors Touring Company.Introduced by the author, this edition also features a suite of l...

But the best disguise, I find, is always the absolute bollock naked truth. It's really strange. Nobody believes it.This is an amoral morality play. It's also got songs in it.Fires keep starting. All across the city, arsonists worm their way into respectable people's homes only to burn them all down. It's a plague. And we don't know why.But Trueman is no fool. He can spot an arsonist from a mile away. These two strangers with troubled pasts who turn up on hi...

Dramatic new play of crime and redemption by winner of Pearson Most Promising New Playwright Award, 2001A story of crime and redemption, starting at the mouth of the River Thames and moving across England over twenty years. It begins with a life choice for Jamie Carris and ends with a re-union with his young daughter. It is also a story about a killer.

Three new plays from three of the UK's most celebrated playwrights. All rooted in West London, the plays explore race, identity and our sense of place and purpose, presented together as one piece, Out West.The Overseas Student by Tanika GuptaLondon. 1888. An 18-year-old Gandhi has just arrived from India to study Law. Miles from home, his wife and his family, we see him navigate a time of uncertainty, growth and opportunity. As he builds a new life, he expl...