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A psychological thriller from writer and director Philip Osment.
1988. THATCHER'S BRITAIN. Seventeen-year-old Luke runs away to London – away from homophobic playground slurs, headlines that scream 'Don't Teach Our Children To Be Gay' and a family who wouldn't understand him – to Uncle Martin, who he once saw with his arms around another man at a march. In the capital, Mark is sacked because of fears about colleagues working with 'someone like him'. His boyfriend, Selwyn, faces being beaten up both by the police and at home by his own stepbrother. Meanwhile, Debbie battles with her son, who doesn't want to live with her and her girlfriend. And retired piano teacher Miss Rosenblum – who once found refuge in this country from a terror that swept away ...
Hearing Things explores the dilemmas of psychiatry from the points of view of patients, relatives and staff. Based on experiences of psychiatrists and patients, the 'healthy' and the 'ill', the play examines how and if people heal and recover inside institutions. As part of the research process, staff and patients at Homerton University Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital in south London took part in drama programmes creating characters and improvising scenes , with clinicians and those receiving treatment swapping roles. Using a unique collaborative process between patients, psychiatrists and mental health staff, Playing ON Theatre Company drew together the stories of those receiving and providing mental health care culminating in performances at the hospitals and in theatre spaces. At the Maudsley, as a result of taking part, two patient's progress was so great that doctors allowed their early discharge. The script of Hearing Things was informed by these workshop programmes and by the participants.
Looking for relief from boredom and a chance to get off the wing, seven young fathers in prison sign-up for an education programme. They try to use the workshops to settle scores and to rise up the prison pecking order. But they're confronted with more than they'd bargained for, as they face up to their relationships with their children and their own fathers. Self-deceptions, vulnerabilities, and failed hopes and dreams are revealed, unleashing anger and violence that the workshop leaders struggle to contain. Researched in Rochester Prison with a young fathers group, the pilot project was devised at the National Youth Theatre in 2008 and was presented as Fathers Inside at Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institute and at the Soho Theatre to critical acclaim.
One night, an off-duty police officer and a woman carrying a cat box meet on Beachy Head. Two disparate souls collide, and learn what it truly means to be touched by the magic of hope. Philip Osment's final play, Can I Help You? is a magical realist examination of the role race and gender have to play in mental health and suicide.
"A dramatist of exceptional and distinctive promise" (Daily Telegraph) The early 1950s. Two brothers and a sister are marooned on a remote farm after their father's death. They are thrown into a state of panic when one of them makes a bid for freedom. Long-suppressed jealousies and resentments begin to seethe and fester. Thirty years later an unexpected visitor brings their feud to a climax.Flesh and Blood completes Philip Osment's trilogy of Devon plays, following the highly acclaimed The Dearly Beloved (winner, 1993 Writers Guild Award) and What I Did in the Holidays (nominee 1995 Writers Guild Award).
What happens when you're in a hole? What happens when that hole's inside you? What do you do you fill it with to make yourself feel whole? Last year, 3 teenagers emailed the 20 Stories High Theatre Company to ask them if they could make a play about their friend Holly. This is how it unravelled... 3 teenagers: ...So that’s our story and we really want to tell it... and we want to act in it as well, and play ourselves... cos actors wouldn’t really be as convincing as us... 20 Stories High: It’s a very moving story... but we’re really busy at the moment and also, to be honest, you’re not really actors. 3 teenagers: But we really want to tell our story... it says on your website that “Everybody has a story to tell... and their own way of telling it...” 20 Stories High: ...well, come back in a year, when we’re less busy, and let’s talk... One Year Later... We made the play with them... WHOLE Winner of the Writers' Guild Award for Theatre Play for Young People 2013.
This book argues that Shakespeare is not the exclusive possession of any one social group or cultural formation, but has provided an enabling and empowering resource which has allowed 'other' radical voices to be heard.
Osment's trilogy of 'Devon Plays' draw on his background growing up on a farm in North Devon and were produced in the mid-1990s by Cambridge Theatre Company (Method and Madness). The Dearly Beloved (1993): 'Local boy made good comes back to visit his mother in a small West Country town where his presence brings home to his friends who stayed put the various ways in which their lives have failed ... you can't but be reminded of Chekhov at times.' Independent What I Did in the Holidays (1995): 'Osment's wonderfully dense and detailed study of fraught life in rurally non-swinging Britain. The play charts a painfully funny path through the casual everyday cruelties inflicted by the thoughtless young and selfish old. Osment's play is a delight.' Evening Standard Flesh and Blood (1996): 'Brilliant at evoking the nostalgia of Devon country life in a strange, recidivist family ... and in the elision between outdoor lust and indoor stuffiness.' Observer
Shakespeare's plays have been adapted or rewritten in various, often surprising, ways since the seventeenth century. This groundbreaking anthology brings together twelve theatrical adaptations of Shakespeares work from around the world and across the centuries. The plays include The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed John Fletcher The History of King Lear Nahum Tate King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy John Keats The Public (El P(blico) Federico Garcia Lorca The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Bertolt Brecht uMabatha Welcome Msomi Measure for Measure Charles Marowitz Hamletmachine Heiner Müller Lears Daughters The Womens Theatre Group & Elaine Feinstein Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief Paula Vogel This Islands Mine Philip Osment Harlem Duet Djanet Sears Each play is introduced by a concise, informative introduction with suggestions for further reading. The collection is prefaced by a detailed General Introduction, which offers an invaluable examination of issues related to