Actor Anthony Cozens is appearing in the dark comic play by the critically acclaimed writer Max Saunders-Singer which comes to the Old Red Lion Theatre next month in a triple bill alongside Simon Stephens’ Nuclear War and the harrowing Buried.
New post-show Q&A with playwright Simon Stephens: Join Terri for the Old Red Lion’s Nuclear War-led triptych
As part of her ongoing series of post-show talks, Mates founder Terri Paddock chairs an unmissable event with leading British playwright Simon Stephens following the first revival of his play Nuclear War, part of the Old Red Lion Triptych. Got any questions?
NEWS: Cast announced for Old Red Lion Triptych, including Simon Stephens’ Nuclear War
Casting has been announced for the much-anticipated Old Red Lion Triptych, which is headlined by the first revival of Simon Stephens’ 2017 one-act play Nuclear War. Time to get booking!
NEWS: Old Red Lion stages first revival of Simon Stephens’ Nuclear War as part of triptych
Simon Stephens’ 2017 one-act play Nuclear War gets its first revival in March as part of a new triple bill at London’s Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington under newly appointed artistic director Alexander Knott.
Text of the Day: Nuclear War
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
NUCLEAR WAR – Royal Court
There’s something refreshingly anarchic about Simon Stephens. In his very long preface to the printed text of Nuclear War, Stephens talks at length about the process of writing this play and how the origination of it came from his interest in writing a piece of text for movement/dance.
NUCLEAR WAR – Royal Court
In his introduction to the Nuclear War text, Simon Stephens explains that as a playwright, he does not want directors and performers to revere him. Rather, he wants them to see his scripts as a starting point for their own creativity.
NUCLEAR WAR – Royal Court Theatre
In his playtext introduction, Nuclear War writer Simon Stephens talks about the tyranny of authorial intent, sharing the responsibility of interpreting the text amongst the cast, and “kicking the shit out” of what’s been written to produce something like a true artistic collaboration; a licence to free associate on paper and on stage.
NUCLEAR WAR – Royal Court Theatre
Text can sometimes be a prison. At its best, postwar British theatre is a writer’s theatre, with the great pensmiths — from Samuel Beckett, John Osborne and Harold Pinter to Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp and Sarah Kane — carving out visions of everyday humanity in all our agonies and glee.
HAPGOOD – Hampstead Theatre
Because of the instability of the present there’s always a faint whiff of nostalgia for the old certainties of the past. And the Cold War era has its very own allure. This can be seen in two current successes: that of the revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1988 play, Hapgood, and of a new play by American playwright Mia Chung, You for Me for You, which takes a look behind the bamboo curtain at North Korea. When it was first staged, Stoppard’s play was widely seen as incomprehensible, with a labyrinthine plot which puzzled not only the characters of the story itself, but audiences as well. And Cold War certainties are surely not so comforting if they are, well, uncertain.