Naomi Wallace

Celebrating 10 years of the London New Play Festival, featuring six plays: Wild Turkey by Joe Penhall: Two small businessmen struggle to keep their flagging burger bar afloat, in the face of increasingly savage and bizarre forces. Everlasting Rose by Judy Upton: Terrified of ageing, a caravan Casanova changes wives every decade, until a woman of the 90's challenges his routine. Strindberg Knew My Father by Mark Jenkins: Life becomes farce as Strindberg loses control over his characters while writing 'Miss Julie'. In the Fields of Aceldama by Naomi Wallace: When their only child dies in an accident, Mattie and Henry draw on her spirited past to find the strength to go on. Two Horsemen by Biyi Bandele: Baja and Langbaja trade stories about life, sex and god in a run-down shack. Will their stories sustain them, or trap them forever? Maison Splendide by Laura Bridgetman: House-sitting for gangsters, Honey and Moon enact a 'let's pretend' lesbian white wedding, parodying suburban customs.

In your hearts you know the truth: I was here among you three hundred years ago . . . Had you chosen differently then - before slavery and greed breathed their venom so deeply into our souls - we would be living in another world now. It is not too late to purge these poisons. Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever. A four-feet-tall 'Little David' confronts the 'Goliath' of slavery once again as he pleads to be readmitted into the Quaker community that has disowned him and who still believe him to be dangerous. Now, 'trembling at the edge of playing God himself', how far will Benjamin go as he stares down his accusers? The Return of Benjamin Lay sweeps across the centuries in a bold exploration of an utterly impossible man. The play opened at the Finborough Theatre, London, in June 2023.

They won't even know we won this game. Only you and I will know that we Topped Their Love. Love has no limits for the Diggs siblings: there's nothing that seventeen-year-old Jude won't do to keep her younger brother Acton safe. Growing up in the turbulence of 1970s America, Jude works nights and weekends to pay the bills, just so that they can stay together with their mother. But when Acton's troublesome pals form a club in their basement, a foolish game threatens to upend Jude's plans and derail their lives forever. Jude will do anything to protect her brother, but someone may have to pay the price. As trust and loyalty are put on the line, hindsight proves devastating in Naomi Wallace's riveting drama. The Breach opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in May 2022.

In their spare time three vigilantes, childhood friends, enjoy patrolling the U S/Mexican border. But these youths soon learn that even the most guarded borders are permeable. When the lines between fantasy and reality become dangerously blurred, these young men are forced to decide what it means to be an American, and who has the right to belong. "...a violent and often beautifully written story about three young Texan men who have hired themselves out to catch 'wetbacks'..." Carol Burbank, Chicago Reader "THE WAR BOYS, a vital three hander about the informal policing of the Mexican border in Texas by racially screwed-up, sadistic vigilantes." James Christopher, Time Out "...the much acclaimed WAR BOYS..." Lyn Gardner, The Guardian (review of IN THE HEART OF AMERICA)

"It's not just the blood-spattered slaughterhouse setting that makes the Royal Shakespeare Company's SLAUGHTER CITY an unusually meaty (you'll forgive the expression) new play. Aligning issues of class and race and labor dynamics to a surrealist aesthetic as elusive as her politics are straightforward, American writer Naomi Wallace shows a willingness to embrace topics once treated by the likes of Clifford Odets and Sophie Treadwell. These days, such terrain is left to the movies--Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, among others--but the pulse of Wallace's writing is of and for the theater. Hers may not be the most audience-friendly of voices, but even her opacity commands attention." Matt Wolf, Variety "Naomi Wallace's SLAUGHTER CITY, which gets its premiere in The Pit, is a strange and compelling play that unties two elements in the American tradition--the radical and the mystic. If it reminds me of anyone it is the Walt Whitman who wrote of 'the audacity of freedom' and the need for America to free itself from the anti-democratic European past. On the radical level, the play is a passionate protest against exploitation... ...the play has passion, poetry and a wild strangeness. Wallace also writes highly effective individual scenes... Most cheering of all is Wallace's adventurous attempt to redefine political drama in terms of a feminist surrealism." Michael Billington, The Guardian

You haven't asked, but yes, you both may stay in our house for the time being. And use our things. I figure it'll take a war to settle it all. A compelling story of two families - one Palestinian, one Israeli - forced by history into an intimacy they didn't choose.'[Returning to Haifa] offers a moving confrontation between two sets of displaced people and an utterly unsentimental exploration of the complexities of home, history and parenthood . . . its call for reciprocal awareness and acknowledgement of past injustice seems more necessary than ever.' GuardianIn 1948, Palestinian couple Said and Safiyya fled their home during the Nakba. Now, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the borders are open for the first time in twenty years, and they dare to return to their home in Haifa. They are ready to find someone else living where they once did, but nothing can prepare them for the encounter they both desire and dread with the son they had to leave behind. Ghassan Kanafani's classic novella Returning to Haifa has been adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi. The play premiered at the Finborough Theatre, London, in February 2018 to coincide with the seventieth anniversaries of both the Nakba or 'catastrophe' - the mass dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 - and the foundation of the State of Israel.

"Taking its title from William Carlos Williams's poem 'Complaint, ' Night Is a Room is one of the more audacious jaw-droppers in recent memory. Strange, surprising, often funny... Carnality is at its core." --New York Times Lauded for her topical, searing explorations of the pressing issues that affect humanity, Naomi Wallace's new play Night Is a Room tackles the timeless subject of love and relationships. This story of a seemingly ideal married couple is torn apart when the husband's previously unknown birth mother makes a surprise visit for his fortieth birthday. Night Is a Room examines the intimate challenges love can create, romantic or otherwise.

Liana and Marcus have a marriage others envy. Dor has grown accustomed to an isolated existence in her modest flat. After a surprise reunion on Marcus's 40th birthday, their worlds are shattered by an unexpected turn of events. NIGHT IS A ROOM is a searing exploration of love's power to both ruin and remake our lives. "In NIGHT IS A ROOM, Naomi Wallace's strange, surprising, often funny finish to her three-play residency at Signature Theater... ...about halfway through the play, Ms Wallace tosses a small bomb into her narrative, the audience, too, will be stumbling to find its footing. To say what causes the jolt would be to ruin one of the more audacious jaw-droppers in recent memory, so I won't, but it was fascinating to hear a crowd move from confused to startled to uncomfortable, yet game and curious. As the lights went up at intermission, I heard someone murmur, What do you do after that'..." Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times

"American theater needs more plays like Naomi Wallace's The Liquid Plain--by which I mean works that are historical, epic and poetic, that valorize the lives of the poor and oppressed."--Time Out New YorkOn the docks of late eighteenth-century Rhode Island, two runaway slaves find love and a near-drowned man. With a motley band of sailors, they plan a desperate and daring run to freedom. As the mysteries of their identities come to light, painful truths about the past and present collide and flow into the next generation. Acclaimed playwright Naomi Wallace's newest work brings to life a group of people whose stories have been erased from history. Told with lyricism and power, The Liquid Plain was awarded the 2012 Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play. This sweeping historical saga has enjoyed acclaimed runs at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Signature Theatre in New York. Naomi Wallace is a playwright from Kentucky. Her plays, which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party , and The Liquid Plain. Awards include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award, Horton Foote Award for Most Promising New American Play, MacArthur Fellowship, and the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama.

In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates-and his-become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred. "NO SUCH COLD THING unsettles the ground beneath our feet much as Wallace's] characters have found it vanishing beneath their own. The characters are pitched, dreamlike, somewhere between life and death as Wallace expertly pinpoints the reality of war in the magical-surreal of dramatic imagination." Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian "In their existential disorientation, Wallace's Middle East plays escape the logic, the prison and the sentimental clich s of a realistic and more sociable theatre, because their impatient narratives take shape only to disintegrate, their dramatic value heightened by the instability of the drama itself." Randy Gener, American Theatre

Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don't get it right they'll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950's segregated America. "Unmissable ... an exquisitely understated examination of female friendship and unspoken love. It's a truly American tragedy about two women who want so little and get nothing except from each other, yet it is leavened with humour. Wallace's devastating, moving play is entirely without extravagance and artifice and is completely grounded in the harshness of the real world." -Lyn Gardner, The Guardian "Naomi Wallace's short, painful prison drama uses the backdrop of racially segregated '50s America to weave a tale of the hope that can blossom behind bars, and the despair that can destroy a life outside them." -Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out "In just 75 minutes on a tiny, almost bare stage, playwright Naomi Wallace conjures a compelling picture of friendship against the odds in the segregated America of the Fifties." -Fiona Mountford, London Evening Standard "AND I AND SILENCE is a play that takes on big themes in a very small way and has the ability to be both powerful and touching, leading to an unforgettable d nouement." -Philip Fisher, The British Theatre Guide "A former MacArthur genius fellow and Obie winner, Wallace is one of the most subtle and politically engaged American playwrights of her generation. Once again, the question arises: Why isn't this superb writer more widely produced? ... Thanks to Wallace's delicate touch and generous imagination, AND I AND SILENCE unfolds into a story of love whose unexpected emotional power sideswipes the audience." -Karen Fricker, Variety

Naomi Wallace's plays speak the underside of life. Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language. Includes: "One Flea SpareIn the Heart of AmericaSlaughter CityThe War BoysThe Trestle at Pope's Creek"