In this first collection by Zinnie Harris, Further than the Furthest Thing evokes the fragility of an island community as their way of life is threatened and they must determine their future, while Midwinter opens as a woman steals a dead horse to feed to a child. How To Hold Your Breath tells the story of a woman who sleeps with the devil and defends her belief in love, even as her world collapses around her, and Meet Me at Dawn offers a compelling, allegorical love story that explores the desolating effects of grief. With an introduction by director Dominic Hill. Further than the Furthest Thing 'Already has the status of a modern classic.' Lyn Gardner, Guardian 'Arguably the greatest tragedy in the Scottish theatrical canon' Mark Brown, Telegraph Midwinter 'There is no mistaking her talent' Observer 'A stunning metaphor for our time' Herald How to Hold Your Breath 'Harris's writing is not only wonderfully imaginative, but also beautifully light.' Tribune 'Dizzyingly bold . . . pressingly topical and admirably ambitious' Financial Times Meet Me at Dawn 'A twenty-first-century classic' Scotsman 'Lyrical, raw and hazy' Sunday Times

The volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how 21st-century British theatre increasingly intercuts dystopian and utopian elements to create innovative strategies for addressing current social and political concerns. In the case studies, a key role is given to the ways in which the selected plays use real and fictional spaces on stage and thereby manage to construct interactional spaces which the spectators are invited to share.

It is a fact that today’s British stages resound with powerfully innovative voices and that, very often, these voices have been those of young women playwrights. This collection of essays gives visibility and pride of place to these fascinating voices by exploring the vitality, inventiveness and particularly strong relevance of these poetics. These women playwrights sometimes invent radically new forms and sometimes experiment with conventional ones in fresh and unexpected ways, as for example when they re-energize naturalism and provide it with new missions. The plays that are addressed are all concerned with the necessity to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world and to further investigate what it means to be human. Intimate or epic, and sometimes both at once, visionary or closer to everyday life, these plays approach the contemporary world through a multitude of prisms – historical, scientific, political and poetic – and open different and visionary perspectives.

This story will be told, the way it has always been told. What else use is it otherwise? The hags on the heath. The woman who went mad. The man who became a tyrant. When her husband returns victorious from the battlefield with a prophecy that he will become king of Scotland, Lady Macbeth vows to make their darkest ambitions a reality. So far, so familiar. But then the story fragments. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth is ruthless and driven, unstoppable in her pursuit of power, yet she quickly descends into madness and despair. Zinnie Harris's thrilling new version undoes the narrative we know, and remakes it, examining Lady Macbeth's trajectory and asking if we have really heard the whole story. This edition includes an afterword by Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. Macbeth (an undoing) premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in February 2023.

"An inside look at London's Tricycle Theatre which with its series of verbatim plays has made a significant contribution to contemporary political theatre"--

A family is riven by intergenerational conflict when forced to resettle in an oppressive state. Solstice explores themes of faith and terror in a world slipping out of control. Zinnie Harris' Solstice is her second RSC commission and marks the first in a trilogy of plays, Solstice, Midwinter (New Work Festival 2004) and Fall. Solstice premiered at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in March 2005.

In the oppressive heat of Midsummer's Eve, Julie, daughter of the lord, is drawn into a dangerous tryst with her father's butler. As the night wears on, the couple, from opposite ends of the social spectrum, dance, flirt and fight towards an explosive conclusion that will shake the existing order to its core. Zinnie Harris's new version of Strindberg's nineteenth-century masterpiece, Miss Julie, relocates the play to central Scotland between the wars. The play premiered at Platform, Easterhouse, in a National Theatre of Scotland Ensemble production in September 2006.

THE STORY: The action takes place in suburban Philadelphia, where the Reverend Avery Harrison, a Baptist preacher, clings tenaciously to his position in the local black elite. His upwardly mobile philosophy is avidly shared by his wife, Myra (whose