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On a farm outside Winchester, Ryan struggles to make a living off the land. His sister Lou has returned home after the death of their father to support Jenny, their formidable mother. Now, when Lou's boyfriend Pete reappears, flush with money from his job at an oil refinery, Jenny fights to hold her children to the life she planned for them.
Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them. Critics Circle and Offwestend Award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has been heralded as 'one of our most exciting young writers' (Times), 'a rare and precious talent' (Evening Standard), 'a writer of grace and luminosity' (Stage) who is 'fast turning into the quiet voice of Britain' (British Theatre Guide).
'A rare duet, in which father and son rediscover a whole world through the redeeming power of art.' – Declan Kiberd In The Wellspring acclaimed novelist and dramatist Barney Norris conducts a conversation with father, the pianist and composer David Owen Norris – 'quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world' (Toronto Globe and Mail) and 'a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard' (Seattle Times). Norris senior is also a television and radio broadcaster who has worked with a huge range of musicians, conductors and composers in the concert hall and the studio. Divided into three parts – 'Listening', 'Playing' and 'Writing' –The Wellspring is the first book to explore Nor...
The first collection of plays from the multi-award-winning playwright and novelist. Introduction by Alice Hamilton. Visitors: On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can't afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can't afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us. Eventide: A love song, an elegy, a celebration: Eventide tells the story of three people whose worlds are disappearing. John is a landlord forced to sell up; Liz is a ...
Although the passing of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 banned African American slavery in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, making the new territory officially "free," slavery in fact persisted in the region through the end of the Civil War. Slaves accompanied presidential appointees serving as soldiers or federal officials in the Upper Mississippi, worked in federally supported mines, and openly accompanied southern travelers. Entrepreneurs from the East Coast started pro-slavery riverfront communities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota to woo vacationing slaveholders. Midwestern slaves joined their southern counterparts in suffering family separations, beatings, auctions, and other indignities that accompanied status as chattel. This revealing work explores all facets of the "peculiar institution" in this peculiar location and its impact on the social and political development of the United States.
A Wiltshire village, 2019. Rob and his fiancée Georgie are checking out the village hall for their wedding reception. Rob's mum wonders if they are rushing into things. Lorca's classic is set in a modern village in Barney Norris's explosive retelling. Just when they begin to talk her round, an old flame who could shatter the wedding plans turns up, and very soon Georgie's past is making her question who really is the love of her life... Barney Norris's explosive retelling of Lorca's classic tragedy sets the action firmly in a modern day village community that's rocked by revelations and gossip
Monologues are an essential part of every actor's toolkit. Actors need them for drama school entry, training, showcases and when auditioning for roles in the industry. Edited by Dee Cannon, author of the bestselling In-Depth Acting, this book showcases selected monologues from some of the finest modern plays by some of today's leading contemporary playwrights. The monologues contain a diverse range of quirky and memorable characters that cross cultural and historical boundaries, and comes in a brand new format, with a notes page next to each speech, acting as an actor's workbook as well as a monologue resource.
- I think the local community's supportive. - Yeah, of like, good stuff. Bric-a-brac sales and choral singing and local elections and swingers' parties, not you and me messing about with a drum kit. Joe, Ross and Ellie used to be in a band. They were pretty good too, making waves across a rugged patchwork of pubs and clubs. They even had a song on Radio 2. But that was all a long time ago and the songs, the stories, the secrets are long since buried. Time has thrown the three friends far from their younger selves. Back together for one night only to play a benefit gig in their home town, they find a community reeling from a poisoning and a pandemic. And as they rehearse the old songs, the stories and secrets must also be excavated. The Band Back Together premiered in a touring production by Farnham Maltings in March 2024.
With 85 percent of its buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, Galena truly is a place drenched in history. From the ancient burial mounds crowding the high banks of the Mississippi to the home of President Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois town's rich past is everywhere on display. Follow Diann Marsh in her dogged pursuit of that fascinating heritage and catch glimpses of unforgettable incidents like the courageous defense put up by a handful of Galena settlers during the Black Hawk War or the monster flood that turned a day in 1892 into a bridge-snapping spectacle. Fortunes are won and lost within the space of a page, but the legacy left by Galena's determined citizens and cared for by passionate guardians like Marsh is one that is sure to endure.
This book explores how the English rural has been represented in contemporary theatre and performance. Exploring a range of plays, forms, and contexts of theatre production, Representing the Rural celebrates the lively engagement with rurality on English stages since 2000, constituting the first full study of theatrical representations of rural life. Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book draws on political philosophy and cultural geography in its definitions of rurality and Englishness, and works with key theoretical concepts such as nostalgia and ethnonationalism. Covering a range of perspectives from the country garden in Mike Bartlett’s Albion to agricultural labour in Nell Leyshon’s The Farm, the enclosure acts in D.C. Moore’s Common to Black rural history in Testament’s Black Men Walking, the book shows how theatre and performance can open up different ways of reading rural geographies, histories, and lives. While Representing the Rural is aimed at students and researchers of theatre and performance, its interdisciplinary scope means that it has wider appeal to other disciplines in the arts and humanities, including geography, politics, and history.