Mark Ravenhill

It’s summer. I’m in a supermarket. It’s hot and I’m sweaty. Damp. And I’m watching this couple shopping. I’m watching you. And you’re both smiling. You see me and you know sort of straight away that I’m going to have you. With a raw mixture of black humour and bleak philosophy, the play follows three disconnected young adults whose lives have been reduced to a series of transactions in an emotionally shrink-wrapped world. A place where shopping is sexy and fucking is a job. Ravenhill’s play is a prophetic vision of our twenty-first century world. It received its world premiere in 1996 in a production by Out of Joint and the Royal Court Theatre, and has been published in this edition to coincide with the 2016 revival of the play at the Lyric Hammersmith, London.

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

A programme text edition published to coincide with the world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre London on 25 February 2009 "I found you. You're here. And I was over there. But now I'm over here. I'm here. You're my brother. I love you" When Franz's mother escaped to the West with one of her identical twin boys she left the other behind. Now 25 years later Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn the brothers must struggle to reconnect. Mark Ravenhill's visceral new play examines the hungers released when two countries separated by a common language meet again.

Twenty-eight years before The Importance of Being Earnest a young woman gives birth to a baby boy. Is it an accident when Nanny places him in a handbag and her unpublished novel into the pram? In 1998 a new baby is stolen and an academic discovers an unpublished novel of more than usual revolting sentimentality. From Victorian wet nurses to 90s sperm banks Mark Ravenhill's play examines the role of parenting in an age of diverse sexualities biological engineering and Tinky Winky's handbag.

After 15 years inside political activist Nick emerges to find that the old causes of the 80s have become the lost causes of the 90s. As he struggles to get to grips with this new world he collides with the new generation. Bonded by a love of pills parties and therapy-speak Nadia Tim and Victor take Nick on a search for the happy-ever-after. Sharp satirical and pulsating with energy Some Explicit Polaroids weaves an engaging urban fairytale for today. In an age where political change seems a distant memory Ravenhill asks "how did we get from there to here?" and "where do we go now?"

Scenes from Family Life is a charged and punchy play about relationships and the last two people left on earth. Lisa and Jack are teenagers but they are about to become adults; Lisa is pregnant and neither of them can wait for the baby to arrive and their lives to start. But then Lisa vanishes - into thin air. Jack panics until she comes back but then she disappears again and then it turns out that everyone is dematerialising all over the planet people are disappearing. Quickly the

Paul is an ordinary man with a shocking secret. At home he is a loving husband and father. At work he administers the cut. In a society sickened by his profession Paul struggles with his conscience and longs to tell the truth.

The ground-breaking debut from one of the most important playwrights of the last decade now in a student edition.

Lisa has breast cancer. Meryl is a healer who believes in the power of positive thinking. As time folds back on itself and then forwards Lisa and Meryl trade roles as the healer and the healed discovering that the world is full of ghosts.

Candide is an optimist. A dreamer. He believes that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But that belief is about to be tested as Candides comfortable life is overtaken by an endless barrage of misfortune. As his world collapses around him the story travels across the centuries to new locations and parallel universes. How will Candides optimism fare when it collides with life in the 21st century. The play is structured around two parallel narratives: one tells the story of Candides attempts to reunite with his love Cunegonde; the other follows a woman who experiences a hugely traumatic event as she attempts to find a way back to happiness.

It's London 1726 and Mrs. Tull's got problems. The whores are giving her a hard time a man in a dress is looking for a job her husband has a roving eye and the apprentice boy keeps disappearing for 'a wander.' Meanwhile in 2001 a group of wealthy gay men are preparing for a raunchy party. Mother Clap's Molly House a black comedy with songs is a celebration of the diversity of human sexuality an exploration of our need to form families and a fascinating insight into a hidden chapter in London's history.

If you could cure thousands of a fatal disease by experimenting on a single child, would you do it? That's the question posed by the narrator of this story, their personal complicity in the experience a slippery possibility.

A famous artist invites her old friends to her luxurious new home. For one night only the group is back together. But celebrations come to an abrupt end when the host suffers an horrific accident. As the victim lies in a coma an almost unthinkable plan starts to take shape: could her suffering be their next work of art? Pool (No Water) is a visceral and shocking new play about the fragility of friendship and the jealousy and resentment inspired by success.

Olivia is a hot young starlet. Now all she needs is the script which will save her from B movie hell a script which balances artistic integrity with blockbuster bucks. Mark thinks he's got the perfect pitch - a script which combines a torrid love story with the dark spectre of terrorism and big big explosions. If he can only persuade Amy he's got the perfect Product.

Citizenship is a bittersweet one-act comedy about growing up, following a boy's frank and messy search to discover his sexual identity. Tom dreams of being kissed, but he's not sure whether by a man or by a woman, and he feels he should choose pretty quickly. His friends' homophobic teasing and interrogations about what he did with his friend Amy the other night leave Tom no space to make up his mind, and he's got no one to ask for advice, except maybe people on the internet. Citizenship captures adolescent confusion with a witty and sensitive charm, crackling with humorous and authentic dialogue. Originally developed as part of the National Theatre Connections Programme, it is an ideal play for young performers.

‘Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation’ Time OutShoot/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 TimesOver There:‘Ravenhill explores postwar Germany’s division and unification through the power battles between twin brothers. The result is fantastically clever and ingenious’ GuardianA 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’ GuardianTen 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.’ TelegraphGhost Story: 'both a satire and a moving story about illness' GuardianThe 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 LondonCame the plague in sixteen sixty fiveOne hundred thousand deadBut I alive. London is infected. The dead fall in the streets. As the plague pits fill, the people of London struggle to maintain a society in the face of overwhelming mortality. Based on eye-witness accounts from 1665 and drawing poetic parallels with modern epidemics, Ten Plagues relates one man's journey through a city in crisis. Told entirely through a series of songs, Ten Plagues explores humanity's struggle with sickness and death and celebrates our capacity for survival. This volume also contains The Coronation of Poppea, a new version of Monteverdi's opera depicting the triumphant adultery between Poppea and Roman Emperor Nero. Tackling this tale of epic lives, Ravenhill updates Tacitus' scathing portrayal of decadence and imperial degeneracy with language which is contemporary, spare and brutally powerful. Taking opera librettos as a foundation, this volume presents two texts for modern music theatre by the seminally controversial playwright Mark Ravenhill. Mark Ravenhill's introduction to the volume explains the inspiration and writing process behind the two pieces.

Across the UK thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to publicspending since WWII – cuts which are the turning point of a generation, undermining the welfare state, higher education and the arts in one fell swoop. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UK’s leading dramatists. Drama groups, universities, youth clubs and theatre companies nationwide joined the event, staging their own versions of the shorts in a national theatrical uprising. Now published in this new collection, Theatre Uncut contains these short plays, addressing audiences who want to think about what the budget cuts really mean, and who they are really hitting. A debate is underway. Protest might begin, minds might be changed, views challenged, ideas formed. Theatre Uncut is a response to a situation that we cannot control, and over which we had no say. Click below to hear an interview with Libby Brodie and Hannah Price of Theatre Uncut:

A collection of three plays for young actors written by Mark Ravenhill: Citizenship, Scenes from a Family Life and Totally Over You, and including an introduction by the author. Originally commissioned as part of the National Theatre Connections programme, these three plays were specifically written for teenagers and are ideal for young performers aged 13-25 years old. Written with greater warmth and humanity than you might expect from the author of such controversial works as Shopping and F***ing, Ravenhill's plays for teenagers are compassionate, intelligent and not at all patronising. With themes of particular interest to teenagers, the plays explore the search for identity during the transition to adulthood: self-perception, relationships, sexual identity and obsession with fame. style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Citizenship is a bittersweet comedy about growing up, following a boy's frank and messy search to discover his sexual identity: schoolboy Tom dreams of being kissed, but is unsure whether it is by a man or woman. style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Scenes from a Family Life is set in a world where everyone starts to dematerialise. Six months on and Jack and Stacy are the only boy and girl on the planet. For Jack it's a dream, for Stacy a nightmare. And when the vanished start to return, Jack has to learn how complex adult relationships are. style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Totally Over You is an exploration of celebrity-obsession. Four girls break up with their boyfriends when they decide they only want to see celebrities. The boys decide to trick the girls into thinking that they are on the brink of fame and fortune as a boy band. The girls decide to win the boys back. But what will happen when they discover the truth?