'Today, we colored men and women, everywhere - are up against it...In the South, they make it as impossible as they can for us to get educated. In the North, they make a pretence of liberality; they give us the ballot and a good education, and then snuff us out. Each year, the problem just to live, gets more difficult to solve.'

The first play by an African American woman ever produced professionally. The European premiere - and the world's first production for nearly 100 years - of Rachel is directed by exciting young director Ola Ince, as part of Black History Month.

Rachel is a young, educated, middle-class woman. But she is born into an African-American family in the early 20th century - a world in which ignorance and violence prevail. While her family and neighbours find different ways to survive, Rachel's dreams of getting married and becoming a mother collide with the tragic events of her family's past as she confronts the harsh reality of a racist world.

Written exactly midway between the American Civil War and the end of slavery, and the explosion of Civil Rights in the 1960s, this hauntingly beautiful and profoundly shocking play still asks urgent questions for today.

Before they were icons they were friends

The world would come to know him as Muhammad Ali, but on 25 February 1964, a twenty-two-year-old Cassius Clay celebrated his world heavyweight title not by hitting the town, but in a hotel room with his three closest friends: activist Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke and American football star Jim Brown. To the outside world, they were American icons. But in that hotel room, here were four men who understood each other and their moment in history in a way that no one else could. With the Civil Rights movement stirring outside, and the melody of A Change is Gonna Come hanging in the air, these men would emerge from that room ready to define a new world.

Kemp Powers's tough talking, in-your-face debut play premiered in LA in 2013 where it won the Ted Schmitt Award for outstanding world premiere of a new play along with three LA Drama Critics Circle Awards, four NAACP Theatre Awards and LA Weekly Theater Awards for playwriting.

This edition was originally published to coincide with the European premiere at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2016 where it received critical acclaim. It was later adapted into a feature film, released in January 2021.

People of the internet, people of the world, you wanna see your Environment Minister SOLVE some shit, this is the soundtrack...

What happens when the unstoppable force of climate change meets the immovable object of Australian politics?

Environment Minister Gwen Malkin's plan to stop climate change is rudely interrupted when a group of eco-terrorists storm Australia's Parliament House during a Fleetwood Mac concert. Blending fact and fiction, David Finnigan's bold new satire is a manic spin on a world on the brink of turmoil.

A daring new play that asks - what would it take to actually stop climate change dead in its tracks? Science? Recycling? Experts? Or maybe: techno, guns and revolution?

Three plays about transformation, intimacy and power from award-winning American Playwright Jen Silverman. Contains the plays The Roommate; The Moors and Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties.

Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties - Five different women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex, and the thea-tah, falling in love in unexpected ways.

The Moors - Two sisters and a dog living on the bleak English moors, and dreaming of love and power, are surprised by a sudden arrival. The Moors is a dark comedy about love, desperation, and visibility.

In The Roommate a middle-aged housewife makes a new friend with a big secret. A dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life - and what happens when the wheels come off.

Originally written by seventeenth century nun Sor Juana In z de la Cruz and adapted here by Catherine Boyle, House of Desires is a romantic farce involving a brother and sister entangled in a web of love with four others.

Critically acclaimed, this play was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Spanish Golden Age 2004 season.

We need the theatre, couldn't, couldn't do without it. Could we?

A successful actress visits her brother's isolated estate far from the city, throwing the frustrated residents unfulfilled ambitions into sharp relief. As her son attempts to impress with a self-penned play, putting much more than his pride at stake, others dream of fame, love and the ability to change their past.

Chekhov's darkly comic masterpiece is reignited for the 21st century by one of the most exciting new voices in British Theatre, Anya Reiss, Winner of the Most Promising Playwright at both the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards.

1939: fascism spreads across Europe, Franco marches on Barcelona and two German chemists discover the processes of atomic fission. In Berkeley, California, theoretical physicists recognise the horrendous potential of this new science: a weapon that draws its power from the very building blocks of the universe.

Struggling to cast off his radical past and thrust into a position of power and authority, the charismatic J Robert Oppenheimer races to win the 'battle of the laboratories' and create a weapon so devastating that it would bring about an end not just to the Second World War but to all war.

Tom Morton-Smith's new play takes us into the heart of the Manhattan Project, revealing the personal cost of making history.

Your classmate is like your family. Maybe even more important than that. A group of schoolchildren, Jewish and Catholic, declare their ambitions: one to be a fireman, one a film star, one a pilot, another a doctor. They are learning the ABC. This is Poland, 1925. As the children grow up, their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then Nazi. Internal grievances deepen as fervent nationalism develops; friends betray each other; violence escalates. Until these ordinary people carry out an extraordinary and monstrous act that darkly resonates to this day.

Polish playwright, Tadeusz Slobodzianek, confronts his country's involvement in the atrocities of the last century and follows the one-time classmates - amidst the weddings, parades, births, deaths, emigrations and reconciliations - into the next.

The heart of Europe. 1942. Children playing, lovers' tiffs, a deserted train station and a ramp rising towards a hangar. This is what you can see, but what should the Red Cross representative report say?
Way to Heaven has previously been produced at the Teatro Mara Guerrero, Madrid by the Centro Dramatico Nacional. A production of this English translation opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London in June 2005.

You're six years old. Mum's in hospital. Dad says she's 'done something stupid'. She finds it hard to be happy.

So you start to make a list of everything that's brilliant about the world. Everything that's worth living for.

1. Ice Cream

2. Kung Fu Movies

3. Burning Things

4. Laughing so hard you shoot milk out your nose

5. Construction cranes

6. Me

You leave it on her pillow. You know she's read it because she's corrected your spelling. Soon, the list will take on a life of its own.

A new play about depression and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

The second volume in this series brings together some of the best new writing from contemporary American playwrights. Each play is introduced by critically acclaimed writers themselves.

THE EDGE OF OUR BODIES by Adam Rapp, Introduced by AM Homes, follows a teenage girl Bernadette who has to grow up quickly when she discovers she is pregnant.

THE COWARD by Nick Jones, introduced by Marsha Norman, is an absurdist comedy set in 18th century England. Lucidus initiates a pistol duel, but when he finds he'll have to fight the son of the man he challenged, he doesn't want to go through with it. His plot to avoid the duel creates more trouble.

THE BOOK OF GRACE by Suzan-Lori Parks, introduced by Oskar Eustis, portrays a dysfunctional American family, where anger and mistrust are symptoms of historical abuse.

WHAT ONCE WE FELT by Ann Marie Healy, introduced by Paula Vogel, is set in a mysterious parallel universe, where Macy is the last ever author to be published in print, the system has an underclass named the Tradepack, and a woman can only have a baby if she possesses the right kind of 'scan card'.

This new series brings together some of the best new writing from contemporary American playwrights.

Volume One is introduced by Andre Bishop, Artistic Director of the Lincoln CenterTheater, the most prestigious theatre in the USA. Each play is introduced by critically acclaimed writers themselves.

The volume includes:

KIN by Bathsheba Doran, (with an introduction by Chris Durang)

Kin sheds a sharp light on the changing face of kinship in the expansive landscape of the modern world.

'Simply terrific. Perhaps the finest new play of the season. Funny andaudacious, haunting, and exquisitely wrought.' Charles Isherwood, New York Times

MIDDLETOWN by Will Eno (with an introduction by Gordon Lish)

Middletown was awarded the prestigious Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play in 2010.

'Middletown glimmers from start to finish with tart, funny, gorgeous little comments on big things: the need for love and forgiveness, the search for meaning in life, the long, lonely ache of disappointment.' Charles Isherwood, New York Times

COMPLETENESS by Itamar Moses (with an introduction by Doug Wright)

Completeness is a 21st-century romantic comedy about the timeless confusions of love.

'A funny, ridiculously smart new play. I haven't seen another play recentlythat so perfectly captured love - hot-blooded, fearless, fi ckle - at this stagein life. I was left with nothing but admiration.' Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News

GOD'S EAR by Jenny Schwartz (with an introduction by Edward Albee)

'This ode to love, loss and the routines of life has the economy and drywit of a Sondheim love song ... Schwartz is a real talent and she is trying something ambitious ... In [her] very modern way, [she is] making a rather old-fashioned case for the power of the written word.' Jason Zinoman, New York Times

Foreword by Cate Blanchett

With contributions by Geoffrey Rush, Baz Luhrmann, Miranda Otto and Hugo Weaving amongst others.

From the writings of Keith Bain, Michael Campbell has collated a step-by-step course for students and teachers on the principles and practice of Australia's great teacher of Movement. In simple language he lays out the secrets of self-knowledge that lie behind understanding the body and mind. 'Movement', says Bain, 'is both how we move and what moves us, Movement is the look in our eyes, the tensions and the tone in our muscles, our breathing, our thinking, our longings and fears. Movement has equal concern for the inner and outer aspects, with each clarifying the other.'

Baz Luhrmann: 'He is one of the great mentors of my creative life.'
Cate Blanchett: 'His teachings are the foundation of my technique.'

When her dead brother is decreed a traitor, his body left unburied beyond the city walls, Antigone refuses to accept this most severe of punishments. Defying her uncle who governs, she dares to say 'No'. Forging ahead with a funeral alone, she places personal allegiance before politics, a tenacious act that will trigger a cycle of destruction.

Renowned for the revelatory nature of his work, Ivo van Hove first enthralled London audiences with his ground-breaking Roman Tragediesseen at the Barbican in 2009. Drawing on his 'ability to break open texts calcified by tradition' (Guardian), the director now turns to a classic Greek masterpiece.

Thomas Bernhard is widely considered to be one of the most important German playwrights in the post-war era. Highly acclaimed, he has written over twenty plays and novels and gained a reputation as one of Austria's most controversial authors.

Bernhard wrote Heldenplatz in 1988 as a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Hitler's Germany. Highly controversial in Austria, the play concerns a Jewish professor who returns to Vienna after the Second World War and discovers that his fellow Austrians are as anti-semitic as ever.

'Heldenplatz' is the square in Vienna where the Austrian-born Hitler made his first speech after the Anschluss.

In Heldenplatz, Bernhard's final play, he explores the shared isolation of people who have lost their bearings, along with most of their illusions.

This practical handbook takes us on a step-by-step journey from pre-production through the rehearsal process, followed by focused advice on each genre from comedy to tragedy, Shakespeare to new plays and musicals. Special chapters offer strategies for dealing with difficult actors, working with producers and taking on the job of an Artistic Director.

An indispensable guide to a director's craft, packed full of advice and peppered with priceless anecdotes about the highs and the lows of a lifetime's work in the theatre.