Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat is an epic cycle of plays exploring the personal and political effect of war on modern life. The plays that make up Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat began life at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as Ravenhill for Breakfast (produced by Paines Plough), winning a Fringe First award, and the Jack Tinker Spirit of the Fringe award. They form a collage of very different scenes, with each taking its title from a classic work. The plays were presented in April 2008 in various venues across London, from Notting Hill to a Victorian warehouse in Shoreditch, via Sloane Square and the South Bank. Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat was originally developed in association with the National Theatre Studio and Paines Plough, and was first produced as Ravenhill for Breakfast at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in August 2007 by Paines Plough, with the support of David Johnson.

'Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation' Time Out Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat: 'A dramatic cycle that is, in its way, epic, but is splintered into many small shards... touches deftly on the impact of war on everyone involved' Financial Times Over There:'Ravenhill explores postwar Germany's division and unification through the power battles between twin brothers. The result is fantastically clever and ingenious' Guardian A Life in Three Acts: 'By turns charming, funny, informative and, in its final segment, lump-in-the-throat moving as Bourne charts the loss of friends and lovers to Aids, and contemplates old age' Guardian Ten Plagues: 'A remarkable song-cycle... it's the portrait of grief beyond measure that's so affecting and which this moving hour of solitudinous lamentation, confusion and defiance brings beautifully to the fore.' Telegraph Ghost Story: 'both a satire and a moving story about illness' Guardian The Experiment: 'Mark Ravenhill keeps things creepy in his monologue, The Experiment, in which he plays the satiny-voiced, slippery narrator... The story, and the narrator's level of complicity, keeps shifting. Ravenhill asks us to consider which version, if any, might be acceptable, and how much we might be willing to avert our eyes from for the greater good.' Independent

In a moment of intense uncertainty surrounding the means, ends, and limits of (countering) terrorism, this study approaches the recent theatres of war through theatrical stagings of terror. Theatre on Terror: Subject Positions in British Drama charts the terrain of contemporary subjectivities both ‘at home’ and ‘on the front line’. Beyond examining the construction and contestation of subject positions in domestic and (sub)urban settings, the book follows border-crossing figures to the shifting battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. What emerges through the analysis of twenty-one plays is not a dichotomy but a dialectics of ‘home’ and ‘front’, where fluid, uncontainable subjects are constantly pushing the contours of conflict. Revising the critical consensus that post-9/11 drama primarily engages with ‘the real’, Ariane de Waal argues that these plays navigate the complexities of the discourse – rather than the historical or social realities – of war and terrorism. British ‘theatre on terror’ negotiates, inflects, and participates in the discursive circulation of stories, idioms, controversies, testimonies, and pieces of (mis)information in the face of global insecurities.

What do we watch when we watch war? Who manages public perceptions of war and how? Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict is the first publication to examine how theatre in the UK has staged, debated and challenged the ways in which spectacle is habitually weaponized in times of war. The 'battle for hearts and minds' and the 'war of images' are fields of combat that can be as powerful as armed conflict. And today, spectacle and conflict – the two concepts that frame the book – have joined forces via audio-visual technologies in ways that are more powerful than ever. Clare Finburgh's original and interdisciplinary interrogation provides a richly provocative account of the structuring role that spectacle plays in warfare, engaging with the works of philosopher Guy Debord, cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, visual studies specialist Marie-José Mondzain, and performance scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann. She offers coherence to a large and expanding field of theatrical war representation by analysing in careful detail a spectrum of works as diverse as expressionist drama, documentary theatre, comedy, musical satire and dance theatre. She demonstrates how features unique to the theatrical art, namely the construction of a fiction in the presence of the audience, can present possibilities for a more informed engagement with how spectacles of war are produced and circulated. If we watch with more resistance, we may contribute in significant ways to the demilitarization of images. And what if this were the first step towards a literal demilitarization?

The volume is divided into two parts, separated by an Intermezzo. The first part, “Dystopia Matters”, benefits from the contribution of reputed scholars of the field of Utopian Studies, who were asked to make a statement explaining why dystopia is important. The Intermezzo completes this part and offers the reader an informed discussion of the concepts of utopia, dystopia and anti-utopia whilst providing ground for the case studies presented in the second part, in the sections devoted to literature, film, and theatre. In one way or another, despite the variety of approaches, all contributors argue for the idea that, if dystopia has invaded most forms of contemporary discourse, its sibling, utopia, has not been eradicated from the scene. Furthermore, the studies show that the tension between the two concepts is instrumental to our cautious, conscious, and tentative construction of the future.

Drawing primarily on Judith Butler’s, Jacques Derrida’s, Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s reflections on precariousness/precarity, the Self and the Other, ethical responsibility/obligation, forgiveness, hos(ti)pitality and community, the essays in this volume examine the various ways in which contemporary British drama and theatre engage with ‘the precarious’. Crucially, what emerges from the discussion of a wide range of plays – including Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go, Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies and In the Republic of Happiness, Tim Crouch’s The Author, Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties, David Greig’s The American Pilot and The Events, Dennis Kelly’s Love and Money, Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur, Robin Soans’s Talking to Terrorists, Simon Stephens’s Pornography, theTheatre Uncut project, debbie tucker green’s dirty butterfly and Laura Wade’s Posh – is the observation that contemporary (British) drama and theatre often realises its thematic and formal/structural potential to the full precisely by reflecting upon the category and the episteme of precariousness, and deliberately turning audience members into active participants in the process of negotiating ethical agency.

What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure examines the politics of contemporary 'political' drama. It traces the origins of the contemporary British political play to the emergence of the idea of 'serious drama' in the late 19th century through the work of Bernard Shaw, and argues that a Shavian version of serious drama was inextricably linked to the social and political structures of British society at the time. While political drama is still often thought of as adhering to a Shavian model in which social issues are presented through a dialectical structure, Grochala argues that the different political structures of contemporary Britain give rise to formally inventive dramaturgies that are no less 'serious' or political than their Shavian forebears. Through analysing the experimental dramaturgies of contemporary plays by playwrights including Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson, debbie tucker green and Mark Ravenhill, among others, it offers a set of new principles for understanding how a play functions politically and reveals how today the dramaturgical structure of a play is as political as its content.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights who have risen to prominence since the 1980s. Written by an international team of scholars, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary drama. Among the many playwrights whose work is examined are Sarah Daniels, Terry Johnson, Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, Anthony Neilson, Mark Ravenhill, Simon Stephens, Debbie Tucker Green, Tanika Gupta and Richard Bean. Each essay features: A biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright A discussion of their most important plays An analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of British theatre A bibliography of texts and critical material

This is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best new British stage plays to emerge in the new millennium. For students of theatre studies and theatre-goers Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today is a perfect companion to Britain's burgeoning theatre writing scene. It explores the context from which new plays have emerged and charts the way that playwrights have responded to the key concerns of the decade and helped shape our sense of who we are. In recent years British theatre has seen a renaissance in playwriting accompanied by a proliferation of writing awards and new writing groups. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the industry and of the key plays and playwrights. It opens by defining what is meant by 'new writing' and providing a study of the leading theatres, such as the Royal Court, the Traverse, the Bush, the Hampstead and the National theatres, together with the London fringe and the work of touring companies. In the second part, Sierz provides a fascinating survey of the main issues that have characterised new plays in the first decade of the new century, such as foreign policy and war overseas, economic boom and bust, divided communities and questions of identity and race. It considers too how playwrights have re-examined domestic issues of family, of love, of growing up, and the fantasies and nightmares of the mind. Against the backdrop of economic, political and social change under New Labour, Sierz shows how British theatre responded to these changes and in doing so has been and remains deeply involved in the project of rewriting the nation.

This collection documents and examines political and protest theatre produced between the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Obama’s election in 2008 by British and American artists responding to their own governments’ actions and policies during this time. The plays take up topics such as the ongoing wars on terror, Blair’s support of U.S. policies, the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and illegal detentions and torture at Abu Ghraib. The authors argue that engaged artists faced a radically different sociopolitical context for their work after 9/11 compared to earlier social protest movements and new forms of theatre, and different emotional strategies were necessary to meet the challenges. The subtitle Patriotic Dissent suggests the double stance of many artists-- influenced by patriotic expressions of national solidarity, yet critical of the ways that patriotic language was put to use against others. The articles represent a broad range of theatre: Broadway musicals, documentary theatre, adaptations of classical theatre, new plays by British playwrights, street performances and installations, and musical concerts. The contributors’ case studies evaluate the effectiveness of important instances of political theatre and protest from this decade, arguing for the significance, relevance, and continuing necessity for evolving forms of political theatre today.