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It's the 1970s, and Fereydoun Farrokhzad's star is blazing bright - he's a sex symbol and chart-topping pop singer. Imagine an Iranian Tom Jones. A decade on and he's living in political exile in Germany, though still selling out the Royal Albert Hall. Then, on 7 August 1992, he's found brutally murdered. The neighbors said his dogs had been barking for two nights. The case has never been solved. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is an investigation into the nature of investigation; part free-wheeling lecture, part podcast and part play. It is a thrilling ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and true-crime podcasts, sorting through the tangle of information available online to reveal the limits of the search engines in solving a decades-old cold case. Originally produced by The Javaad Alipoor Company in 2022, this witty, fast-paced and cutting-edge play, by Javaad Alipoor with Chris Thorpe, was co-commissioned by HOME and the National Theatre of Parramatta. It has toured worldwide, including a run at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, during the 2023 Festival Fringe.
We live in a time where old orders are collapsing: from the postcolonial nation states of the Middle East, to the EU and the American election. Through it all, tech savvy and extremist groups rip up political certainties. Amidst this, a generation of young men find themselves burning with resentment, without the money, power and sex they think they deserve. This crisis of masculinity leads them into an online world of fantasy, violence and reality. The Believers Are But Brothers is based on Alipoor's experiences of working with young people, and research he conducted online. The original show was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and transferred to the Bush Theatre, London. The show envelops its audience in this digital realm, weaving us into the webs of resentment, violence and power networks that are eating away at the structures of the twentieth century. This bold one-man show explores the smoke and mirrors world of online extremism, anonymity and hate speech.
For all of the political, economic, and technological obstacles that stand in the way of addressing climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge is in the realm of imagination. Can we envision a better world? What might an equitable, sustainable, decarbonized, and just society look like? What if the concept of a Green New Deal—the initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while addressing interwoven social problems like economic inequality and racial injustice—could become reality? The Future Is Not Fixed presents a dazzling variety of answers to these questions in the form of fifty plays—from writers representing all inhabited continents—commissioned for Climate Change Theatre...
Many encounters between people of different religions are marked by an initial sense of incompetence, ignorance and fear-- of getting it wrong, of causing offence, of ulterior motives. Such fears are here explored honestly, in stories of actual situations and relationships - often unexpected, sometimes funny, invariably profound.Friendship is presented as a public rather than merely a private phenomenon, enabling relations of trust and depth to develop and leading to the possibility of authentic talk and reciprocity of respect and courtesy. It emerges as a risky venture in learning how to be human, involving honest negotiation, self-sacrifice and a seeking after the truth. It can enable people to address the fears that so often prohibit inter-religious encounters from deepening beyond the superficial. A strong underlying theme is how the Church of England can contribute to social cohesion in a religiously pluralistic society, even if local clergy and congregations at first feel untrained or wary.
This scholarly volume delves into the manner in which British Muslims articulate their cultural, social and religious identities through theatrical productions in 21st-century Britain and examines their portrayal within these performances. The study investigates the factors influencing the emergence and evolution of Islamic theatre in Britain, providing an in-depth analysis of plays by British playwrights of both Muslim and non-Muslim origins that have shaped the trajectory of British Islamic theatre from the late 20th century to the present. Önder Çakırtaş critically examines how British playwrights, predominantly of Muslim origin but also including some of non-Muslim origin, depict Muslim identity and culture from their unique perspectives, particularly in the context of post-9/11 society. Adopting a comprehensive approach to Islamic playwriting and performance, this book highlights the accomplishments and contributions of contemporary British playwrights, primarily from Muslim backgrounds. This study will be of significant interest to scholars and students in theatre studies, as well as related disciplines such as Islamic studies, sociology and political science.
Powerful critique of UK and US surveillance and repression of Muslims and prosecution of homegrown terrorism The new front in the War on Terror is the “homegrown enemy,” domestic terrorists who have become the focus of sprawling counterterrorism structures of policing and surveillance in the United States and across Europe. Domestic surveillance has mushroomed—at least 100,000 Muslims in America have been secretly under scrutiny. British police compiled a secret suspect list of more than 8,000 al-Qaeda “sympathizers,” and in another operation included almost 300 children fifteen and under among the potential extremists investigated. MI5 doubled in size in just five years. Based on several years of research and reportage, in locations as disperate as Texas, New York and Yorkshire, and written in engrossing, precise prose, this is the first comprehensive critique of counterradicalization strategies. The new policy and policing campaigns have been backed by an industry of freshly minted experts and liberal commentators. The Muslims Are Coming! looks at the way these debates have been transformed by the embrace of a narrowly configured and ill-conceived anti-extremism.
ARTISTIC DIRECTORS OF THE FUTURE...TALKS BREXIT. Selected and Edited by Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway. A provocative, urgent, necessary collection of work featuring essays by Tutku Barbaros, Javaad Alipoor, Charleen Parkes and plays by Firdos Ali, Sian Davila, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Hannah Khalil, Vinay Patel, Milli Bhatia, Kelechi Iwumene, Bisola E. Alabi and Daniel York. This publication is made in collaboration with NoPassport Press.
True, the city's many summer festivals each maintain their own identities. And yet 'The Festival' has stuck as a shorthand which captures the truly eclectic experience of 'doing Edinburgh' which has made the city's very name synonymous with world-leading culture and performance. This book is the first to tell the complete history of the Edinburgh Festival. Arts writer David Pollock paints an extraordinary portrait of the growth, glory years and struggles of this global cultural phenomenon. He introduces a wide cast of key individuals and shows, including Fleabag, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Joseph Beuys, The Fall and Six The Musical. The Edinburgh Festival: A Biography provides a unique perspective on the social and cultural history of Scotland and its capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It will delight and intrigue all who have experience of the greatest festival in the world.
Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre interrogates the paradoxical nature of theatre texts, which have been understood both as separate literary objects in their own right and as material for performance. Drawing on analysis of contemporary practitioners who are working creatively with text, the book re-examines the relationship between text and performance within the specific context of British theatre. The chapters discuss a wide range of theatre-makers creating work in the UK from the 1990s onwards, from playwrights like Tim Crouch and Jasmine Lee-Jones to companies including Action Hero and RashDash. In doing so, the book addresses issues such as theatrical authorship, art...
Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworth’s most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworth’s work chronologically from Mojo (1995) to The Ferryman (2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significant in a variety of ways to Butterworth’s presentation of cultural and personal crisis.