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Foreword by Diana Damian Martin Werner Schwab’s final work, also known as a theatre-extinction comedy, is a brutal, irreverent and bizarrely comical piece about what happens when an emerging stage production is sabotaged by outsiders. Following a dispute with the cast, the director replaces all the actors with pensioners from a nearby home for the elderly. At first compliant and polite, the ‘forgotten and dispossessed’ gradually start to question the director’s authority, leading to a ‘coup d’état’ where the theatre’s cleaning lady is selected as the group’s leader. Not everybody survives the new order. Marking two decades since the playwright’s death, this is the first English-language publication of a forgotten masterpiece. Werner Schwab was only thirty-five years old when he was found dead in his room following a New Year’s Eve drinking spree in 1994. He was, at the time, the undisputed star of Germanspeaking theatre who effortlessly rose to fame for his unique talent with language and his darkly humorous, confrontational narratives. In only four years, he completed fifteen plays with Dead at Last, At Last No More Air (Endlich tot, endlich keine luft mehr) being his last.

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You’re seven years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. She finds it hard to be happy. You start a list of everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for. You leave it on her pillow. You know she’s read it because she’s corrected your spelling.

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It’s the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive? Mr Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future for America’s most famous family.

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Anton’s got it made: dream house, artistic wife, baby on the way. And, as the smoke rises from another city saved by coalition bombs, there’s a fortune to be made rebuilding the wreckage. So what’s he doing forging his boss’s signature? And why has his wife crushed her hands under the piano lid? Painfully funny scenes of married bliss in meltdown and the insistent presence, on their screens and in their dreams, of the West's far-flung and half-forgotten wars – Eldorado asks what happens when the drive for success carries us past our coping point.

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Beyond Hillsborough is a verbatim play, written and set in 2012, that explores the personal consequences of living with the Hillsborough tragedy.[/i] Following extensive, never before heard interviews with survivors, bereaved family members, politicians, police and journalists, the play interweaves personal narratives taken directly from transcripts to present the truth. This edition includes Teachers Notes and activities for using Beyond Hillsborough in the classroom.

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TOM: As Shakespeare said, and I agree with him: ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’ ANGELA: I don’t think he meant ignore the fact that your lover got married. A charming diplomat and his glamorous new wife ought to be happy. Angela’s first husband was a liar and a cheat; her second husband, on the other hand, clearly adores her. He says so, repeatedly, especially on Thursday evenings when he goes out to visit one of his clubs. The suspicions she begins to harbour are obviously based on her unfortunate first marriage, poor thing. But as her apparent neurosis takes hold, Juan resorts to illusion to maintain the delusion which results in a lot of confusion. If experience has taught Angela anything it’s the need to fight fire with fire, lies with more lies, and every last trick with pure magic…

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Venichka Erofeev (Venya), cultured alcoholic, self-mocking intellectual, regales us with an account of his heroic odyssey from Moscow to provincial Petushki. Stories of his rich, turbulent inner life abound as he staggers through Brezhnev's Moscow and encounters dangerous, eccentric and often hilarious strangers on a train. His journey ends when fate cruelly intervenes curtailing the vivid panorama of Russian life that we have seen through Venya's eyes. Stephen Mulrine's adaptation for one actor of Erofeev's cult novel has been highly acclaimed on BBC Radio 3, at the Edinburgh Festival, London's West End, and New York in Tom Courtenay's blissfully funny performance.

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Behsharam (Shameless) Two daughters, two mothers, one father, a cardboard cut-out and a foul-mouthed granny – a household at war and a family which will do anything to protect its secrets. Behzti (Dishonour) Past her prime, Min happily spends her life caring for her frail, vicious mother, Balbir. Today, for the first time in years, they’re heading out to the local Sikh temple. In a community where public honour is paramount, is there any room for the truth? Behud (Beyond Belief) A playwright attempts to make sense of her past by visiting the darkest corners of her imagination. Inspired by the events surrounding Behzti, Behud is the compelling story of an artist struggling to be heard. Fourteen 1983. Brainbox Tina’s parents are always shouting, her mum says she’s developing too quickly and her best friend Sharon has a dark secret. Thirty years later, Tina’s life hasn’t turned out quite how it was supposed to… Khandan (Family) Widowed matriarch Jeeto has a strong sense of her past and principles. She’s spent her life working hard and making sacrifices for her children. But eldest son Pal isn’t following in her footsteps. What happens when the legacy of a father collides with the dreams of his son?

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The International Contest of Contemporary Drama (ICCD) was set up by Belarus Free Theatre to encourage new writing and to promote Belarusian cultural identity on an international stage with the participation of artists around Europe. Belarusian playwrights, banned within their own country but recognised for their work outside, have the opportunity to show their work in Belarus. It also includes the work of foreign playwrights in an international cultural context, and in which Belarus would have its place for the first time. The ICCD has produced playwrights such as Anna Yablonskaya, Aleksey Shcherbak, and Pavel Pryazhko – whose plays have been produced at the Royal Court Theatre – and brothers Mikhail and Vyatcheslav Durnenekov who have written for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The contest, one of the top three of its kind in central Europe, has enjoyed success since its conception in 2005, garnering critical acclaim, but was discontinued in 2010 due to a lack of funds. 2014 is the first year it has been held in a free country. In previous years it was held underground in Belarus, hidden from the authorities. BFT have now reinstated this contest, and increased the diversity of participants in order to include Belarusians who remain isolated because of the state policy on internet censorship and media control. This publication is dedicated to promoting the works of the winning playwrights, and is published to coincide with an award ceremony at the Young Vic Theatre in London. In 2014, BFT received 523 submissions from 12 participating countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, USA, Germany, UK, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Estonia. The winning plays in this collection are in 3 main categories: Best Full-Length Play; Best Experimental Writing for Theatre/Short Play; Best Adaptation of a Classic Text; plus a special award, The Tom Stoppard Award for Best Debut. The ICCD, and Belarus Free Theatre: New Plays from Central Europe, reconnects the Belarusian people with their independent artistic voice and their cultural identity within a European context. This dual language edition (Russian and English) will be distributed free of charge within Belarus.

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Mike’s dead dad’s friend’s daughter wants him to father her child. His boyfriend Bert isn’t convinced. Their housemate Sofia has her own fish to fry. She needs to find a man before it’s too late, but her dad keeps getting in the middle. A journey through fatherhood past and present, full of inventive comedy and unforgettable emotion.

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