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Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s. Voices, Documents, New Interpretations

Part of a commissioned series of books which cover British playwriting from the 1950s, this volume is mainly written by author and editor Aleks Sierz, but also includes chapters by three other scholars,Catherine Rees, Trish Reid and Graham Saunders, and documentary material by four playwrights: a Sarah Kane interview, Mark Ravenhill’s ‘A Tear in the Fabric’, a collection of short writings by Anthony Neilson and most significantly Philip Ridley’s previously unpublished monologue play, Vesper (1986). The book offers a critical consideration of 1990s British playwriting that goes far beyond the author’s In-Yer-Face Theatre. The chapter on Philip Ridley is based not only on extensive interviews with the playwright, one of which is published as ‘Putting a new lens on the world: Philip Ridley in conversation with Aleks Sierz’, New Theatre Quarterly 98, May 2009: pp 109-117,but also on several post-show panels (chaired by the author) and programme notes for productions of Ridley’s work at the Hampstead Theatre and Trafalgar Studios. The book’s Afterword ends with five critical insights into 1990s playwriting, which implicitly constitute a research programme which could overturn many of the clichés about 1990s New Writing.