Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
Dreaming and Drowning (NHB Modern Plays) - cover

Dreaming and Drowning (NHB Modern Plays)

Kwame Owusu

Publisher: Nick Hern Books

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Malachi's been looking forward to a fresh start at uni for months. He's settling in, he's got a stack of books to read and he's met someone new – Kojo, a musician with a megawatt smile, who's basically perfect.
But something doesn't feel right. He keeps having the same nightmare – sinking, crushed by the weight of the ocean – and it's getting worse… A beast grows in the water, hungry, relentless, hunting him but always just out of sight. As the boundaries between nightmare and reality fracture, Malachi must fight harder than ever to stay afloat.
Kwame Owusu's play Dreaming and Drowning is an intimate and visceral deep-dive into the boundless mind of a young Black queer man wrestling with anxiety.
It won the Mustapha Matura Award, was shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award, and was one of the winning plays in the RSC's 37 Plays competition. It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in November 2023, directed by the playwright, performed by Tienne Simon, and produced by WoLab.
'A visceral but lyrical look at anxiety and acceptance' - Guardian

'A joyful play that will leave you hopeful… funny, well-paced, and engaging' - LondonTheatre1
'Pithy, poetic, and viscerally evocative' - Reviews Hub
'Wonderfully life-enhancing… punchy and richly imaginative… delivers a double hit of theatrical dopamine… witty, contemporary and at times compellingly poetic… a fleet, gripping piece of storytelling… a little gem… a must-see for anybody interested in fine new writing' - WhatsOnStage
Available since: 12/07/2023.
Print length: 80 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Mogadishu - cover

    Mogadishu

    Vivienne Franzmann

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    A gripping and urgent play about a well-meaning teacher who intervenes on behalf of a troublesome student, with terrifying consequences. Joint Winner of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2008.
When white secondary-school teacher Amanda is pushed to the ground by black student Jason, she's reluctant to report him as she knows exclusion could condemn him to a future as troubled as his past.
But when Jason decides to protect himself by spinning a story of his own, Amanda is sucked into a vortex of lies in which victim becomes perpetrator. With the truth becoming less clear and more dangerous by the day, it isn't long before careers, relationships and even lives are under threat.
'A tough, gripping spectacle' Guardian
'Outstanding... Franzmann manages to make all the characters credible and well-rounded, even the damaged perpetrator... She gets to the rotten core of what's going on in these melting-pot battlegrounds... The play of the year? In my book, quite possibly' Dominic Cavendish,Telegraph
    Show book
  • Charnel Rose - Early Poetry of Conrad Aiken - cover

    Charnel Rose - Early Poetry of...

    Conrad Aiken

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    In Earth Triumphant, Conrad Aiken's first major book of poetry, he took  on a significant subject: What is the ultimate source of the human spirit? When the young human spirit loves, rages, strives, plays, where does that energy come from? When the old human spirit sees that time has passed and death is  coming,  where does that spirit find rest? Aiken's answer is unequivocal: in the ancient, ageless, inhuman, nurturing, commanding, accepting Earth.Where many poets might fly off in high abstraction with such a theme, Aiken does not; he keeps his feet on his good earth and connects to everyday reality in ways that have not dated in nearly 100 years.His verse is sophisticated, musically structured, and reads very well. Enjoy!
    Show book
  • The Dream Women Called - cover

    The Dream Women Called

    Lori Wilson

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Through the poems in The Dream Women Called, Lori Wilson attends to the spirits of depression, uncertainty, and fear while wondering at the beauty in what’s broken, the remarkable in the ordinary, and the balm that the natural world can offer. Following a single speaker, we’re reminded how many lives one woman can live.This book is about crossing into a new version of your own story—after a marriage ends, the parents die, the children are grown, or the faith is discarded—and finding a place to stand, a new way to take up space in the world. Uniting past and present, these poems create multifaceted portraits, particularly of relationships between mothers and daughters. Wilson’s poems sift through memory, dreams, art, imagination, nature, and close observation, turning each discovery over in order to see it fully. Beneath the fine-grained imagery of these lyric excavations are the sometimes opposing but fundamental desires to be whole and to be seen, which often means looking within as well as turning toward the world outside. The speaker is listening always for the dream women who call, for whatever may beckon from the present and future, preparing her in some way for a life that’s truly hers.
    Show book
  • Sonnets (Argo Classics) - cover

    Sonnets (Argo Classics)

    William Shakespeare

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic prose and verse read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. 
‘In black ink my love may still shine bright…’ 
Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare’s Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart. Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love. 
All of the Shakespeare plays within the ARGO Classics catalogue are performed by the Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players. The Marlowe was founded in 1907 with a mission to focus on effective delivery of verse, respect the integrity of texts, and rescue neglected plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and the less performed plays of Shakespeare himself. The Marlowe has performed annually at Cambridge Arts Theatre since its opening in 1936 and continues to produce some of the finest actors of their generations. 
Thurston Dart, Professor of Music at London University and a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, directed the music for this production. 
The full cast includes: George Rylands; John Barton; Tony Church; Anthony White; Anthony Jacobs; Gary Watson; Richard Marquand; David Gibson. 
The top-notch performances in this production are a testament to the European theater's rich tradition and expertise. The actors delivery, steeped in the essence of Shakespeare's timeless sonnets, brings a new dimension to the experience. 
For fans of Richard Parsons (GCSE English Shakespeare Text Guide), and Arthur Miller (Incident at Vichy).
    Show book
  • Separate Tables (The Rattigan Collection) - cover

    Separate Tables (The Rattigan...

    Terence Rattigan

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Set in a run-down residential hotel in Bournemouth, Separate Tables consists of two linked one-act plays. In the first a lonely divorcee tracks down her former husband in order to resume a kind of half-life with him. In the other a repressed young spinster offers brave moral support to a fake major accused of importuning women in a local cinema.
In an alternative version, only recently discovered among Rattigan's papers, the major's offence was revealed to be homosexual; these 'alternative' scenes are published here for the first time.
This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.
'Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan' - Michael Billington
    Show book
  • The Magic Barrel - cover

    The Magic Barrel

    Bernard Malamud

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    From the author of The Natural comes a classic short story about a young rabbinical student and his fateful encounter with an enigmatic matchmaker. A co-production with the National Jewish Theater.Recorded before a live audience at Chicago’s Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in July 1992.Adapted and Directed by Arnold AprillProducing Director Susan Albert LoewenbergShelley Berman as SalzmanDavid Cromer as Leo FinkleMarge Kotlisky as Mrs. SalzmanNaama Potok as Lily HirschornMalcolm Rothman as The NarratorJensen Wheeler as StellaRadio Producer: Robert NeuhausRecording Engineer: Larry Rock
    Show book