“When we travel abroad we see our home with a clarity that we may never have been offered before.” (Simon Stephens)In this compelling international collection, Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens continues his bold interrogation of human fragility, connection, and transformation across cultures and continents.From the haunting intimacy of A Dark, Dark, Dark, Dark Blue, to the lyrical solitude of Maria, the existential ...

"Stephens writes dramas set in uncaring, uncompromising worlds, whose characters speak in a language at once naturalistic and yet artificially pared-down and whose uncertain attempts to assert their own identities sometimes lead to gratuitous and brutal acts of violence." - Financial TimesA fifth collection of plays by one of Britain's most prolific contemporary playwrights, Simon Stephens, charting his work from 2011-2016, ranging from London's Royal Court Theatre...

There's a hole running through the centre of my stomach. You must have all felt a bit awkward because you can probably see it.Sea Wall is a delicate monologue, completely devastating and beautifully powerful.Alex's story, spoken directly to the audience, begins full of clear light and smiles, as he speaks about his wife, visiting her father in the South of France, having a daughter, photography, and the bottom of the sea. His tone is natural, happy and eng...

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.

First collection from the 2004 Pearson Award-winning playwrightSimon Stephens Plays: 1 brings together four of the early plays from the winner of the 2002 Pearson Best New Play Award. Since Bluebird in 1998, Stephens has gained recognition for humane plays that display a sharp observation and compassionate response to the lives of ordinary people in urban locations.Bluebird: Cabbie Jimmy overhears the weird, wonderful and violent tales of his passengers he c...

Winner of Best Revival at the Olivier Awards 2024Winner of Best Play Revival at the WhatsOnStage Awards 2024Can you imagine if it was possible to completely change the way you live your life? To look at your life and ask yourself what you would do if it died. If your old life died. It ended. And then take what's left of your real life and live it properly. How can I do that, Michael? Where do I start?Chekhov's classic tale o...

I came to New York when I was seventeen. I had all these ideas about how my life was gonna turn out. When I think about those ideas now, I don't know if I should laugh or shit.In a back street in the West Village, Jacob Towney tries to save the restaurant that has been his home for longer than he can remember and release his daughter to the life he dreams she can have. His place is a home for the odd ghosts of the village. It is out of place and out of time and running out...

Danny returns from Basra to a foreign England and a different kind of battle. He visits an old flame, buys a gun and goes on a blistering road trip through the new home front.'I don't blame the war. The war was alright. I miss it. It's just you come back to this.'Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement - and to the war itself. Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Simon Stephen's n...

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 think I'm a human being before anything else. I don't care what other people say. I don't care what people write in books. I need to think for myself.'Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered in 1879 in Copenhagen, the second in a series of realist plays by Ibsen, and immediately provoked controversy with its apparently feminist message and exposure of the hypocrisy of Victorian middle-class marriage. In Ibsen's play, Nora Helmer has secretly (and deceptively) b...

'Everything human beings do finishes up bad in the end. Everything good human beings ever make is built on something monstrous. Nothing lasts. We certainly won't...'Based on his experience as a teacher, Stephens describes his play as 'The History Boys on crack'. It explores the underlying tensions and potential violence in a group of affluent, articulate seventeen year old students. Contemporary and unnerving, with elements of The Catcher in the Rye, Punk Rock...

Something is about to happen that will change one family forever. Set over the course of nine months, On the Shore of the Wide World is an epic play about love, family, Roy Keane and the size of the galaxy.