David Eldridge

The first collection of plays by the young British talent behind the smash-hit stage adaptation of Festen. David Eldridge won the Time Out Award for Best New Play in 2001 for Under the Blue Sky. His full-length plays include Serving it Up, A Week with Tony, Summer Begins, Falling, Under the Blue Sky, Festen, and M.A.D.

Serving it Up; Summer Begins; Under the Blue Sky; M.A.D.

Eldridge Plays: 1

This book provides an insightful overview of the major cultural forms of 1930s America: literature and drama, music and radio, film and photography, art and design, and a chapter on the role of the federal government in the development of the arts. The intellectual context of 1930s American culture is a strong feature, whilst case studies of influential texts and practitioners of the decade - from War of the Worlds to The Grapes of Wrath and from Edward Hopper to the Rockefeller Centre - help to explain the cultural impulses of radicalism, nationalism and escapism that characterize the United States in the 1930s.

American Culture in the 1930s

Why do people ever see things through? Why do they ever stay? It's so hard. Every relationship reaches a crossroad some time. As dawn breaks, Maggie is heating some milk and Gary wonders what she's doing out of bed. Maybe it's time for an honest conversation – but how much honesty can this marriage take? Following his five-star play Beginning, which played sold-out runs at the National Theatre and in the West End, writer David Eldridge brings his raw, touching and funny style to a portrait of a 21st century marriage, the second of three plays to explore love and relationships.

Middle

Set in a time of political and social unrest the play focuses on one family and the destructive conflict within their home.

Mutual Assured Destruction

M.A.D.

“A wry, funny and touching meditation on loneliness, that private shame of the singleton in the era of the dating app and of fraudulent boasting on social media ... written with a real depth of insight, humour, compassion and a keen sense of the ridiculous...” Independent It's the early hours of the morning in the aftermath of Laura's housewarming party. Danny, 42, divorced and living with his mother, is the last remaining guest. The flat is in a mess and so are they. One more drink? This sharp and astute two-hander takes an intimate look in real-time at the first fragile moments of risking your heart and taking a chance. Both comedic and tender, it asks questions about mutual loneliness and human connections. Beginning premiered at the National Theatre, London in October 2017. This new Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Sarah Grochala.

Beginning

'People always get the wrong idea about Essex don't they?' Len's on his death bed and the family gather to say their final farewells. His sisters still aren't speaking after nearly 20 years, his nephew's trying for a baby - and a bigger house, while his best mate Ken remembers 'Bas-vegas' when it was a village. As the spread is laid out and the ham sandwiches sit next to the wreaths, it's hard to see who's hungry and who's just greedy. In Basildon is full of explosive family dynamics and knotty relationships, embracing history, emotion and a strong sense of homeland. This depiction of indigenous Essex dwellers is uncompromising and at times harsh, but Eldridge also elicits deep sympathy for his characters as they face death, grief and crumbling familial bonds. The play is an epic family drama exploring inheritance and the myth of place.

In Basildon

"Trash for starters, Tories for seconds: David Eldridge is Serving it up again" (Independent) Serving It Up "Combines a promising talent for spark, funny dialgue with a bleak vision of racism and rage in London's East End...What is astonishing is that it manages to be rancidly funny and deeply chilling at the same time." (Guardian) Ever struggled to maintain standards at work, with a new partner and a political party that seems to be falling apart? Or battled with preparations for your daughter's expensive wedding? Spend A Week With Tony as he juggles his job, relationship, party politics and plans for the biggest and best wedding his constituency's ever seen.

'Serving It Up' & 'A Week With Tony'

This second collection of plays by David Eldridge showcases the development of one of the most impressive playwriting talents of recent years. His plays combine emotional impact with complexity, realistic characterisation with humour, and are among the most powerfully moving dramas of contemporary playwriting. Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness moves between a dream story and real lives to tell an intricate, complex story of a young man dealing with the break up of his family and the legacy of race responsibility. Market Boy is a gloriously raucous rites-of-passage drama set in Romford Market in the 1980s. Bringing a market jungle to life with the decade's Thatcherite capitalist fervour, this spectacular, savage, and beautiful yarn is a tale looks at a boy's coming of age and loss of innocence. The Knot of the Heart has themes of love, family and addiction, and explores the creeping onset of self-destruction beneath a veneer of respectability. Full of David Eldridge's trademark lyricism within everyday family life and interaction, this is a play where emotions are high and relationships are sensitively written. The Stock Da'wa explodes the wafer thin bonhomie of a long-awaited reunion into a blackly funny maelstrom of pique and long repressed truth-telling - and with shocking consequences. Eldridge Plays 2 contains the definitive version of the four plays and an introduction by the author.

Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, Market Boy, The Knot of the Heart, The Stock Da'Wa

Eldridge Plays: 2

Henrik Ibsen

Should the truth be pursued whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based.

The Wild Duck

Helge, the patriarch of a chain of restaurants, is celebrating his sixtieth birthday and everyone is coming home from the party including Helge's sons, Christian, Michael and his daughter Helene. Missing from the roster of invitees is Christian's twin sister, Linda, who recently committed suicide. The reason for her action and the repercussions from it, form the basis of the shocking and painful events that transpire during a twenty-four hour period. In the midst of dinner, Christian makes a startling accusation and, even as the disbelieving guests are choosing sides, the play slowly unwraps the truth. David Eldridge powerful new play is adapted from Thomas Vinterborg's screenplay of the very successful film, Dogme.Published to tie in with Almeida Theatre production in March 2004 directed by Rufus Norris

Festen

"Why has this happened to us? Things like this don't happen to families like ours." Beautiful and privileged, Lucy is enjoying a burgeoning career in television. But her social drug habit has become a serious addiction, casting a dark shadow over her future happiness. As her charmed life begins to slip away Lucy comes to realize that the devoted support of her family does not come without a price. With themes of love, family and addiction, The Knot of the Heart explores the creeping onset of self-destruction beneath a veneer of respectability. Full of David Eldridge's trademark lyricism within everyday family life and interaction, this is a play where emotions are high and relationships are sensitively written. Ultimately hopeful and redemptive,The Knot of the Heart is atmospheric and poetic without undermining the all-too-believable characters' realism.

The Knot of the Heart

James Fenwick

Kieran Foster

Filmmakers and cinema industries across the globe invest more time, money and creative energy in projects and ideas that never get produced than in the movies that actually make it to the screens. Thousands of projects are abandoned in pre-production, halted, cut short, or even made and never distributed  a shadow cinema that exists only in the archives. This collection of essays by leading scholars and researchers opens those archives to draw on a wealth of previously unexamined scripts, correspondence and production material, reconstructing many of the hidden histories of the last hundred years of world cinema. Highlighting the fact that the movies we see are actually the exception to the rule, this study uncovers the myriad reasons why 'failures' occur and considers how understanding those failures can transform the disciplines of film and media history. The first survey of this new area of empirical study across transnational borders, Shadow Cinema is a vital and fascinating demonstration of the importance of the unmade, unseen, and unknown history of cinema.

The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films

Shadow Cinema

'Why has this happened to us? Things like this don't happen to families like ours.' Full of David Eldridge's trademark lyricism within everyday family life and interaction, The Knot of the Heart is a play where emotions are high and relationships are sensitively written. Beautiful and privileged, Lucy is enjoying a burgeoning career in television. But her social drug habit has become a serious addiction, casting a dark shadow over her future happiness. As her charmed life begins to slip away, Lucy comes to realise that the devoted support of her family does not come without a price. Ultimately hopeful and redemptive, The Knot of the Heart is atmospheric and poetic without undermining the all-too-believable characters' realism.

Sad single teachers get together. Drink tequila, get very pissed and reveal secrets and then stagger home at four in the morning, with some dim light in your brain saying "Shit. Year seven first lesson."' David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky premiered at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London, in September 2000. Methuen's Royal Court Writers Series was launched in 1981 to celebrate 25 years of the English Stage Company and 21 years since the publication of the first Methuen Modern Play. Published to coincide with specific productions in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, the series fulfils the dual role of programme and playscript.

Under The Blue Sky

Simon Stephens

Robert Holman

On a farm in the North East of England a family gathers. Five brothers and four generations feature in an epic play about hope, love, fear and the very end of time. A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky is a refreshingly subtle and compassionate vision of the world on the edge of apocalypse. Within a cosmological context, the focus is on a single family, their relations with each other and their unreconciled regrets, soon to become permanent. With an ensemble of strong, engaging characters, there are knotty, realistic family dynamics and a palimpsest of recent family history. The characters and dialogue are naturalistic but the serious themes are elucidated and alleviated with humour and quirky, surreal touches. The play represents a unique collboration between three of the UK's pre-eminent stage writers. The ambition of the partnership is matched by the ambition of the play's sweeping scope. Whilst the three voices collide, they also ring out individually without sacrificing the piece's coherent wholeness, and the play represents a rare, fascinating study in stage collaboration.

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky

Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness moves between dream story and real lives to tell an intricate, complex story of a young man dealing with the break up of his family and the legacy of race responsibility. Joey's an ordinary man but everywhere he looks people are slipping away. A notice at work catches his eye. He doesn't know where to go next - his Dad, the community or Marvin Gaye. In a world he can't connect with, is there someone out there who can connect with Joey? The play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in May 2005.

Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness

Helge, the patriarch of a chain of restaurants, is celebrating his sixtieth birthday and everyone is coming home from the party including Helge's sons, Christian, Michael and his daughter Helene. Missing from the roster of invitees is Christian's twin sister, Linda, who recently committed suicide. The reason for her action and the repercussions from it, form the basis of the shocking and painful events that transpire during a twenty-four hour period. In the midst of dinner, Christian makes a startling accusation and, even as the disbelieving guests are choosing sides, the play slowly unwraps the truth. David Eldridge powerful new play is adapted from Thomas Vinterborg's screenplay of the very successful film, Dogme. Published to tie in with Almeida Theatre production in March 2004 directed by Rufus Norris

Gloriously raucous rites-of-passage drama set in Romford Market 'You've got to talk to them son. Listen to them. Look for a way in. You're a handsome bloke - they'll love you. Give me a year and I'll teach you everything I know.' There's an art to selling stilettos and you'd better grasp it. Learn a good wind-up, learn the pull of cash, learn drugs, learn sex, and run wild with the market monkeys. Stay sharp in the ruthless world of Essex traders. Romford Market, 1985. This boy has everything to learn. A spectacular, savage, gorgeous yarn which brings a market jungle to the vast Olivier stage; a tale about the time Mrs Thatcher said we should embrace the marketplace; a story about losing your innocence. And your cherry. Following the critical success of his new version of Ibsen's The Wild Duck (Donmar Warehouse 2005), David Eldridge's Market Boy premieres on the National Theatre's Olivier stage on 25 May 2006.

David Eldridge

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