Weldon Rising Disappeared

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Weldon Rising: Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them after the murder. Disappeared: Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply vanished? Nagy is "the laconic laureate of this spiritual wasteland" (Paul Taylor, Independent)

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Weldon Rising: Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them after the murder. Disappeared: Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply vanished? Nagy is "the laconic laureate of this spiritual wasteland" (Paul Taylor, Independent)

"Young playwrights don't come much hotter than Phyllis Nagy" (Daily Telegraph) Includes her three Royal Court -performed plays Weldon Rising "Here is the best new play I have seen in many months...This play is exciting because it is well written, unusually constructed and morally serious." (Financial Times); in Butterfly Kiss "Nagy captures the texture of a life and writes short, vivid, often disturbingly erotic scenes...it's a play that leaves me proclaiming Nagy a writer of real talent" (Guardian), Disappeared (winner of the Mobil Prize,1995) "A piece that gets right under your skin...There's no neat solution to Nagy's conundrum, just a fog of fear, despair, and most remarkably of all, a final mirage of escape. Spine-tingling stuff" (Daily Telegraph) The Strip, "kaleidoscopic and hugely accomplished dissection of fate, love and chance" (Independent) "Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

"Young playwrights don't come much hotter than Phyllis Nagy" (Daily Telegraph) Includes her three Royal Court -performed plays Weldon Rising "Here is the best new play I have seen in many months...This play is exciting because it is well written, unusually constructed and morally serious." (Financial Times); in Butterfly Kiss "Nagy captures the texture of a life and writes short, vivid, often disturbingly erotic scenes...it's a play that leaves me proclaiming Nagy a writer of real talent" (Guardian), Disappeared (winner of the Mobil Prize,1995) "A piece that gets right under your skin...There's no neat solution to Nagy's conundrum, just a fog of fear, despair, and most remarkably of all, a final mirage of escape. Spine-tingling stuff" (Daily Telegraph) The Strip, "kaleidoscopic and hugely accomplished dissection of fate, love and chance" (Independent) "Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

Women playwrights speak about their art and the theatre in this collection of interviews about a key decade of British drama. Twenty leading contemporary dramatists discuss their work from the perspective of being both writers and women. Each talks about the state of the theatre now, the craft of playwrighting, and the pressures of working within a male dominated environment. The book also features Sarah Kane's very last public interview. 'What I think is so exciting about the response to a number of the plays written by women in the last ten years is that they are popular with audiences - because they've got this quality, this energy and this culture that hasn't been seen much on stage before: a humour, sexiness and wit that's been missing' - Charlotte Keatley

The most controversial and newsworthy plays of British theatre are a rash of rude, vicious and provocative pieces by a brat pack of twentysomethings whose debuts startled critics and audiences with their heady mix of sex, violence and street-poetry. In-Yer-Face Theatre is the first book to study this exciting outburst of creative self-expression by what in other contexts has been called Generation X, or Thatcher's Children, the 'yoof' who grew up during the last Conservative Government. The book argues that, for example, Trainspotting, Blasted, Mojo and Shopping and F**king are much more than a collection of shock tactics - taken together, they represent a consistent critique of modern life, one which focuses on the problem of violence, the crisis of masculinity and the futility of consumerism. The book contains extensive interviews with playwrights, including Sarah Kane ( Blasted), Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and F**king), Philip Ridley (The Pitchfork Disney), Patrick Marber (Closer) and Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Leenane).

Women playwrights speak about their art and the theatre in this collection of interviews about a key decade of British drama. Twenty leading contemporary dramatists discuss their work from the perspective of being both writers and women. Each talks about the state of the theatre now, the craft of playwrighting, and the pressures of working within a male dominated environment. The book also features Sarah Kane's very last public interview. 'What I think is so exciting about the response to a number of the plays written by women in the last ten years is that they are popular with audiences - because they've got this quality, this energy and this culture that hasn't been seen much on stage before: a humour, sexiness and wit that's been missing' - Charlotte Keatley

Theatre in Crisis? Performance Manifestos for a New Century is a wide-ranging look at the state of contemporary theater practice, economics, and issues related to identity, politics, and technology. The volume offers a snapshot dissection of where theater is, where it has been and where it might be going through the voices of established and emerging theater artists and scholars from the UK, US, and elsewhere. Contributors: Maria M. Delgado & Caridad Svich • Oliver Mayer, Jorge Cortiñas, Neena Beber, & Craig Lucas • Jim Carmody • Roberta Levitow • Peter Lichtenfels & Lynette Hunter • Michael Billington • Claire H. Macdonald • Anna Furse • Phyllis Nagy • Max Stafford-Clark • Len Berkman • DD Kugler • Tori Haring-Smith • John London • Kia Corthron • Alice Tuan • Ricardo Szwarcer • Peter Sellars • Dragan Klaic • Lisa D’Amour • Paul Heritage • Matthew Causey • Andy Lavender • Jon Fosse • Erik Ehn • Matthew Maguire • Shelley Berc • Ruth Margraff • Martin Epstein • Mac Wellman • Goat Island