Desires are suppressed and aspirations thwarted for both the staff and patients of a psychiatric ward. Orderly Oliver pines for Margaret Thatcher. Dr Rupert wants Nurse Whitehall who wants Dr Rupert. But Dr Rupert and his wife are trying for a baby and Nurse Whitehall who is also married has just returned from maternity leave. As for the patients, Duncan secretly loves Anna who secretly loves Martin who openly loves no one. Both a love story and a modern allegory of the state, Picture Ourselves in Latvia confronts the impossibility of categorising people as either sane or insane.
Our Walk Through The World is a collection of six short plays examining the absurdities, tragedies and small triumphs of modern life. In Tilly (An Introduction), a young woman films herself auditioning to become a surrogate mother. Colour-coded jelly beans prove the saving of one man's career in Rules of Assortment, and a football manager introduces his latest acquisition to an assembled press in Our Prospects For The Coming Season. A son is reunited with his biological mother in Relinquish, while in The Viewing an estate agent shows a couple around their dream home to a soundscape of gunfire and screaming. Finally, in Frisky & The Panda Man, a conservationist struggles to rationalise his feelings for the last female panda on earth. Dark, irreverent and very funny, Our Walk Through The World was first performed at the Old Red Lion Theatre, London in October 2013. With flexible casting and staging requirements, the plays may be performed individually or together. Frisky & The Panda Man was a winning finalist in the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival 2013.
In the wake of public spending cuts, Arthur wrestles with the methods set out in Montgomery Swank's 28 Ways to Terminate Your Existence and Questions You May Have, the one book he has salvaged from the closure of his beloved library. In the wake of her own death, his wife Esther reconciles the ghosts of the past with a hope for the future. A play of two worlds. This elemental and affecting two-hander explores love, its loss, and the lives we inherit and impose on others. " - full of both outrageous dark comedy and deep sincerity - an ultimately compelling night of theatre" nytheatre.com British playwright Ross Howard is an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow. Frisky & The Panda Man was a winning finalist in the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival 2013.
Two of Usflashes between Honolulu and New York City shining a spotlight on the lives of He and She and the social and domestic pressures leading to the destructive act of He assassinating John Lennon in December 1980. A showdown between the real and the fantastic through a haunting cast of characters Two of Usis a mind-bending parable of contemporary relevance speaking to gender expectations celebrity culture and gun violence.
The narrative is of travels through Tajikistan, the poorest country economically in Central Asia. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the economy collapsed, the people suffered extreme privation and large elements of the country reverted to what became known as a "yak economy". Shortly after the declaration of independence in 1991, the country descended into Civil War, with open hostilities between the warring factions only coming to an end in 1997. The country is still recovering from the economic devastation wrought by the conflict and today, over half the population is deemed to be in poverty, surviving on an income equivalent to or less than US$2.00 per day. Tajikistan is the smallest nation in Central Asia with over 50 per cent of the land-mass being more than 3,000 metres above sea level. It is also the most water rich country with lakes, major glaciers and more than 900 of its rivers over 10 kilometres in length. The journey follows the border with Afghanistan and traverses the High Pamirs and the so-called Pamir Knot. This term identifies the junction of the Himalaya, Karakoram, Tian Shan, Kunlun and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. Collectively, these mountains form the roof of the world. The ethnic composition of a population of 8 million is 60 per cent Tajik, who include the Pamiris who occupy much of the Pamir region, followed by 23 per cent Uzbek. The balance is made up of Russian, Kyrgyz and several other smaller minorities. The majority of Tajiks are Sunni Muslims, while the Pamiris are almost exclusvely followers of the Ishmaeli sect of Shia. Tajikistan is a secular republic and elections are held for the presidency and the parliament. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the system has been dominated by the same power structure, and Emomalii Rahmon, the President, came to power in 1994 following a disputed election, and has remained in place through a sequence of similarly disputed ballots. His regime is seen to be corrupt and he has been described as running the country for his own pesonal profit and is prepared to use threats and intimidation to remain in power. The narrative considers the issues of corruption and poverty and how the majority of people were focused on survival and didn't wish to be distracted by those things over which they had no control. However, they do know that the aspirations they have for their children and the future will not come to pass unless the constraining knot of poverty, dictatorship and corruption is loosened and brought undone. Only then with the human spirit prevail.
