Barney Norris

A Times bestseller 'Wonderful...I was hooked from the first page. It's the real stuff.' - Michael Frayn 'Deeply affecting' - Guardian 'Superb' - Mail on Sunday 'Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent' - Evening Standard 'There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.' One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide âe" a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower âe" all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life.

Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

Turning for Home

'Shot through with compassion . . . this dreamlike, winding tale is a joy.' A. L. KENNEDY 'Moving and unconventionally wise' Guardian This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end. At a hotel bar in a quiet English town, two strangers meet by chance and share their stories. Hers is of an inconspicuous life, shaken by heartbreak and scattered with unfulfilled dreams. His is a dizzying tale of an unending quest for someone he lost in his youth. From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a dark prison cell; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, we join him as he slips through time. Extraordinary though his story is, what she has to reveal is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them – or you – expected. From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find meaning in a confusing world – a world that can sometimes threaten to overwhelm us, but one that is rich with possibility, and always full of wonder.

The Vanishing Hours

'Lyrical' Daily Mail 'Beautiful' Spectator 'Skilled' Financial Times 'Vulnerable' Guardian 'Deft' Independent 'Profound' Observer 'The beginning of summer. Perhaps it crosses my mind even now while I wait for news of Amy that something is coming towards us. Like sighting the first slow swell of a wave.' Years ago, in an almost accidental moment of heroism, Ed saved Amy from drowning. Now, in his thirties, he finds himself adrift. He's been living in London for years - some of them good - but he's stuck in a relationship he can't move forward, has a job that just pays the bills, and can't shake the sense that life should mean more than this. Perhaps all Ed needs is a moment to pause. To exhale and start anew. And when he meets Amy again by chance, it seems that happiness might not be so far out of reach. But then tragedy overtakes him, and Ed must decide whether to let history and duty define his life, or whether he should push against the tide and write his own story. Filled with hope and characteristic warmth, Undercurrent is a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do.

The heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful novel about finding yourself, from the Times bestselling author of Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

Undercurrent

David Owen Norris

Home is a moment that's quickly lost. Afterwards you can only sail through the ghost of it. The Wellspring explores the complex and shifting dynamic between a father and son, as the writer Barney Norris and the musician David Owen Norris overlay the palimpsests of their separate lives in a cycle of memories that gradually intertwine and become a concerted search for connection, belonging and home. The Wellspring opens at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, in March 2022.

The Wellspring

I wish there could be a day where families came together and just said it all to each other. Because then everyone would know it all, and there'd be nothing left to hurt anyone. Sussex. London. Wiltshire. Northamptonshire. Wales. Over three decades, a family spreads across the country, and the chord they made together starts to fray, the distance between them changing the music of their lives. A love song to the people who raised him, and a hymn to the bravery of our brief time on earth, Barney Norris's We Started to Sing premieres at the Arcola Theatre, London, in May 2022.

We Started to Sing

Wiltshire. 1915. As the shadow of war falls over the Wiltshire landscape, a young couple finds itself caught up in the turmoil of troubled times. For generations, John and Anna’s families have made a living by working the land. Growing up in back-to-back cottages, everyone expects them to marry. Now, however, with nearly half a million young soldiers pouring into the country, the world seems so much bigger than they had ever imagined and the future feels far from certain. Critics Circle and Off West End Award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has been heralded as ‘one of our most exciting young writers’ (Times), ‘a rare and precious talent’ (Evening Standard) ‘a writer of grace and luminosity’ (The Stage) who is ‘fast turning into the quiet voice of Britain’ (British Theatre Guide).

A Wiltshire Love Story

Echo's End

This is the first study of one of the most significant voices of modern international theatre, one of Wales's leading writers, and one of the most compelling and beautiful bodies of work in the last fifty years. To Bodies Gone is written by playwright Barney Norris, who has assisted in Gill's productions and possesses an intimate and personal knowledge of Gill's processes and values. He explores a career remarkable in its constancy from the groundbreaking stagingideas of the early productions to the extraordinary heights of the mature work, illustrated by the rave reviews for Versailles, Gill latest play. Norris's principle theme is the aesthetic Gill introduced to theatre, and which has remained the bedrock of his work, in its various manifestations across several decades: Gill's work as a writer and director has consistently revealed the extraordinary in the daily world. Analysing his career broadly chronologically, this study places Gill's work in the wider context of the theatre, providing a portrait ofBritish theatre in the second half of the twentieth century and contributing new insights into theatre history. To Bodies Gone includes chapters on Gill's early work, influences (Lawrence, Chekhov, Beckett), his translations and adaptations (Lawrence, Chekhov, Wedekind, Faulkner), his directing career at the Royal Court, Riverside Studios, National Theatre and NT Studio, plus his major plays - Small Change, Kick for Touch, In the Blue, Cardiff East, The York Realist and, most recently, Versailles, Gill's exploration of the new order following the first world war. The result is a major study full of insight into Gill and into British Theatre.

To Bodies Gone: The Theatre of Peter Gill

'Shot through with compassion . . . this dreamlike, winding tale is a joy.' A. L. KENNEDY 'Moving and unconventionally wise' Guardian This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end. At a hotel bar in a quiet English town, two strangers meet by chance and share their stories. Hers is of an inconspicuous life, shaken by heartbreak and scattered with unfulfilled dreams. His is a dizzying tale of an unending quest for someone he lost in his youth. From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a dark prison cell; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, we join him as he slips through time. Extraordinary though his story is, what she has to reveal is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them - or you - expected. From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find meaning in a confusing world - a world that can sometimes threaten to overwhelm us, but one that is rich with possibility, and always full of wonder.

Three short plays from the multi-award-winning writer of Visitors At First Sight: Two young people meet and spend a New Year together in Salzburg. Holly is there on holiday with her parents; Jack plays piano in the hotel bar. Their story is told through a collage of exchange and recollection. At First Sight toured the UK and ended at the Latitude Festival, 2011. Winner of the Drama Association of Wales One Act Play Competition. Fear Of Music: Luke is the first in his family to go to university, and he’s determined to stop his irritating fireball of a brother from following in their father’s footsteps by joining the army. Vivid, detailed and often hilarious, Fear of Music time-bends between 1987 and 1993, piecing together the prelude and aftermath of a tragedy that sees history repeating itself. Every You Every Me: Every You Every Me is a play about coping, Kurt Cobain, rebellion, revolution, opening your A-level results, choosing your life and the pressure of systems on kids. A new play exploring teenagers’ mental health issues, performed at the Salisbury Playhouse Salberg Studio.

What you Wish for in Youth: Three Short Plays

‘A rare duet, in which father and son rediscover a whole world through the redeeming power of art.’ – Declan Kiberd In The Wellspring acclaimed novelist and dramatist Barney Norris conducts a conversation with father, the pianist and composer David Owen Norris – ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’ (Toronto Globe and Mail) and ‘a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard’ (Seattle Times). Norris senior is also a television and radio broadcaster who has worked with a huge range of musicians, conductors and composers in the concert hall and the studio. Divided into three parts – ‘Listening’, ‘Playing’ and ‘Writing’ –The Wellspring is the first book to explore Norris’s fifty-year career and discover how his background (non-metropolitan, C of E, literary) influenced his choices and his music. The book becomes a study of the relationship between his Englishness and his work, of his inheritance and how it is projected forward into new compositions and new performance. In the process the reader encounters a fascinating world of concerts, prizes, collaborations, and inspirations, in which Norris, always open to the different, has lived. This variety includes Norris’s devotion to Parry and Elgar, his musical discoveries made playing the square piano of the nineteenth century, and the opportunities resulting from the pressurized world of competitions. In addition to exploring the career of this renowned musician, the father-son conversation also reveals Barney Norris’s experience of working in English theatre over the last ten years and of his practice as a novelist with a growing reputation. Their combined experience, in two fields, in two different generations, provides a thought-provoking discussion of how a place and a culture inform artistic work, and how England and Englishness have evolved during the past half century. Informative, entertaining, at times provocative, The Wellspring will become a classic investigation of creativity, of Englishness, and of the changing world.

Conversations with David Norris

Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them. On the country's southern margin where the towns give way to the English Channel, both search for the centre of their lives. Will they find a way to let go of the past for the sake of their futures?

While We're Here

'Shot through with compassion . . . this dreamlike, winding tale is a joy.' A. L. KENNEDY This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end. At a hotel bar in a quiet English town, two strangers meet by chance and share their stories. Hers is of an inconspicuous life, shaken by heartbreak and scattered with unfulfilled dreams. His is a dizzying tale of an unending quest for someone he lost in his youth. From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a dark prison cell; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, we join him as he slips through time. Extraordinary though his story is, what she has to reveal is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them - or you - expected. From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find meaning in a confusing world - a world that can sometimes threaten to overwhelm us, but one that is rich with possibility, and always full of wonder.

The first collection of plays from the multi-award-winning playwright and novelist. Introduction by Alice Hamilton. Visitors: On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can't afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can't afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us. Eventide: A love song, an elegy, a celebration: Eventide tells the story of three people whose worlds are disappearing. John is a landlord forced to sell up; Liz is a church organist who can't get a gig; Mark takes what work he can just to pay the rent. Their tales unfold round the back of a pub hidden deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside - a heart that doesn't seem to be beating any more. While We're Here: Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them. Nightfall: On a farm outside Winchester, Ryan struggles to make a living off the land. His sister Lou has returned home after the death of their father to support Jenny, their formidable mother. Not so long ago, when a neighbour's Labrador strayed onto the farm, their dad reached for his shotgun. Now, when Lou's boyfriend Pete reappears, flush with money from his job at an oil refinery, Jenny fights to hold her children to the life she planned for them.

Visitors; Eventide; While We're Here; Nightfall

Barney Norris: Plays One

Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them. Critics Circle and Offwestend Award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has been heralded as 'one of our most exciting young writers' (Times), 'a rare and precious talent' (Evening Standard), 'a writer of grace and luminosity' (Stage) who is 'fast turning into the quiet voice of Britain' (British Theatre Guide).

Alice Birch

Brad Birch

Fiona Doyle

Chris Bush

Natalie Mitchell

Chinonyerem Odimba

In-Sook Chappell

Phoebe Éclair Powell

Theatre has a funny way of getting to the heart of who we are now and – particularly in the case of Connections – who we are going to be. Drawing together the work of nine leading playwrights, National Theatre Connections 2018 features work by some of the most exciting contemporary playwrights. Gathered together in one volume, the plays offer young performers an engaging selection of material to perform, read or study. From friends building bridges and siblings breaking down walls; girls making their voice heard and boys searching for home; and not forgetting a band of unlikely action heroes taking control of the weather. The anthology contains nine play scripts along with imaginative production notes and exercises, as well as a short introduction to the writing process for the tenth Connections play [ BLANK ] by Alice Birch. National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regularly works with 500 theatre companies and 10,000 young people each year.

The Blue Electric Wind; The Changing Room; The Free9; The Ceasefire Babies; These Bridges; When They Go Low; Want; The Sweetness of a Sting; Dungeness

National Theatre Connections 2018

" Le monde s'achève sans cesse autour de nous. Chaque mesure de notre partition appartient déjà au souvenir et à l'imagination au moment où nous la jouons. Autant l'écouter. " C'est une soirée paisible à Salisbury. Quand soudain, non loin de la majestueuse cathédrale, un fracas de tôle froissée déchire le silence. Autour d'un banal et tragique accident de la route, cinq vies vont entrer en collision. Il y a Rita, gouailleuse et paumée, qui vend des fleurs au marché – et un peu d'herbe pour arrondir ses fins de mois. Il y a Sam, un garçon timide en proie aux affres des premières amours tandis que son père tombe gravement malade. George, qui vient de perdre sa femme après quarante ans d'une passion simple. Alison, femme de soldat esseulée qui sombre dans la dépression et se raccroche à ses rêves inassouvis. Et puis il y a Liam, qui du haut des remparts observe toute la scène. Cinq personnages, comme les cinq rivières qui jadis se rencontrèrent à l'endroit où se dresse aujourd'hui la ville. Cinq destins, chacun à sa manière infléchi par le drame. Cinq vies minuscules, qui tour à tour prennent corps et voix pour se hisser au-delà de l'ordinaire et toucher au miraculeux. Roman traduit de l'anglais par Karine Lalechère Barney Norris est né dans le Sussex en 1987 et a grandi à Salisbury. À la fin de ses études, il fonde la compagnie théâtrale Up In Arms et monte ses premières pièces, Eventide et Visitors, qui lui valent de nombreuses récompenses et l'imposent d'emblée en Angleterre comme l'un des jeunes dramaturges les plus doués de sa génération. Ce qu'on entend quand on écoute chanter les rivières est son premier roman. Karine Lalechère est traductrice depuis 2001. Titulaire d'un DESS de traduction littéraire, elle a appris l'anglais en faisant la cuisine sur un voilier de croisière en Turquie. Elle a traduit notamment Patrick McGuinness, Karen Joy Fowler et Ta-Nehisi Coates. Après avoir vécu à Londres et à New York, elle habite et travaille aujourd'hui à Paris. " Barney Norris : retenez ce nom. À trente ans seulement, il signe un premier roman remarquable. " The Times " Bouleversant. " The Guardian " Une écriture merveilleuse, capable de sonder l'ordinaire pour en faire surgir des richesses exceptionnelles. Un écrivain déjà mémorable, d'une maturité rare pour son âge. " Sunday Times " Le premier roman de Barney Norris, tout autant que son œuvre théâtrale, témoigne d'une grande finesse et d'une intense puissance d'émotion. " David Hare

Ce qu'on entend quand on écoute chanter les rivières

On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can’t afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can’t afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us. Critics Circle Award 2014 for Most Promising Playwright. Winner of the Best New Play Award at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2014. Shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright and the Writers Guild of Great Britain 2014 award for Best Play.

Barney Norris

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