London Arts & Letters  

Latest Posts  |  Archive  | 

Ravenhill's Iraq War Cycle To Have London Premiere

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 at 2:44 PM

Print

Send

RSS

Share:

Sixteen plays by Mark Ravenhill, whose scandal-causing works (most notably "Shopping and F***ing" 12 years ago) are on every college syllabus dealing with postmodern drama, will have their premiere at four venues in London in April. Tiresomely, the series, which is called Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, is about the Iraq war. "There are a few [plays] where I try to imagine what it's like there," he said. "But it's mostly about us going about our everyday lives knowing there's a war happening and how much we acknowledge that."

The plays are described by Ravenhill as an "epic made up of little fragments," and he has even suggested a loyalty card scheme for those interested in catching a few.

Depending on which play they see, the audience could be faced with a monologue or a 60-strong army scene.

Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat had its first airing last summer at the Edinburgh Festival, where staged readings were performed at breakfast time. It was to match the originality of this format that the playwright and his London producers decided to sprinkle the plays around London: The participating theaters are the National, the Gate in Notting Hill, the Royal Court, and the Village Underground in Shoreditch.

London Arts & Letters Homepage