Other books that might interest you

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  The Mirrormaker - Poems

  Brian Laidlaw

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  The author of The Stuntman melds myths ancient and contemporary among the raspberries, wolves, and taconite mines of Minnesota’s Iron Range. Songwriter and poet Brian Laidlaw follows up The Stuntman with another collection that fuses the stories of two fabled couples: the mythical Narcissus and Echo, and Bob Dylan and Echo Star Helstrom, subject of the song “Girl from the North Country.” But where The Stuntman focused on Narcissus, The Mirrormaker takes its primary inspiration from Echo, drawing on ecocritical readings of American history and interrogating the masculine logic of resource extraction. In these poems, Laidlaw explores themes of history and celebrity, love and longing, myth and meaning, in a landscape both ravaged and redemptive. He pits romantic obsession against self-obsession—”The first time I saw the moon / I thought it was my idea” —and asks whether a meaningful distinction can ever be drawn between the two. These themes are explored further in a companion song suite, written by Laidlaw and recorded with a longtime collaborator from the Iron Range, that accompanies this book via download. Sharp, searching, and ecstatically musical, The Mirrormaker is a genre-expanding exploration of boom and bust—in mining economies and in young love. “Laidlaw is a futuristic country poet-singer in the other side of the century’s mirror, where consumption, celebritifying, and commodification rule as the earth rots from the inside out . . . living proof that the bard is still with us.” —Gillian Conoley

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  The Heart Takes Wing

  Kathy Kituai, Nitya Bernard Parker

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  A brilliant collaboration of words and music between tanka artist Kathy Kituai and composer/musician Nitya Bernard Parker, based on Kathy's book Straggling into Winter.

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  If Only (NHB Modern Plays)

  David Adger

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  An explosive, topical drama from one of the UK's top political playwrights.
  It's 16th April 2010, the day after the UK's first ever televised prime ministerial debate. Stranded in Malaga Airport by a volcanic ash-cloud, a Labour special adviser, a Lib Dem staffer and a Tory candidate consider their options. Can their parties survive without them? How will they get back home? And who'll end up in government?
  Fast forward to 4th August 2014. As the nation settles down to commemorate the outbreak of the First World War, the three politicians meet again. One of them knows something that could change the outcome of the 2015 election. Should they reveal it? And at what cost?
  'funny, gripping and bang on the money' Telegraph
  'fascinating... clearly meticulously researched' Guardian
  'witty and very clever... hilarious' British Theatre Guide

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  The Encounter (NHB Modern Plays)

  Simon McBurney, Complicite

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  In 1969 Loren McIntyre, a National Geographic photographer, found himself lost among the people of the remote Javari Valley in Brazil. It was an encounter that was to change his life, bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus.
  Inspired by the book Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu, The Encounter traces McIntyre's journey into the depths of the Amazon rainforest, incorporating innovative technology into a solo performance to build a shifting world of sound.
  The Encounter opened at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015 performed by Simon McBurney, and received its London premiere at the Barbican in February 2016 before embarking on a world tour.
  'Masterful storytelling from a man and a company who are incapable of remaining within known theatrical boundaries' - Independent
  'The stuff of a twisting, turning, thoroughly engrossing fairytale... McBurney captures the metaphysical spirit - as well as the pulse-quickening heart - of the experience with this head-turning, spellbinding show' - Telegraph
  'The effect is a soundcloud of a process, in which fact and fiction, past and present, research and production intermingle, spinning a story out of the air' - Variety
  'In a solo performance made with many people... [McBurney] pulls the thread of a story from out of the noise of contemporary western life and the sounds of the jungle to create a meditation on interconnectedness, perception and time' - Guardian
  'The Encounter is a tour de force that shows contemporary theatre at its most immersive and thought-provoking' - Financial Times

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  The Small Hours (NHB Modern Plays)

  Katherine Soper

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  'I dunno. Like…I think I just wanna do something different, I don't wanna do things the way everyone else is doing them but I don't know how and I don't know what I even mean.'
  It's the middle of the night, and Peebs and Epi are the only students left at school over half-term. At the end of their night out, former step-siblings Red and Jazz try to navigate their reunion. With only a couple of hours until morning, Jaffa tries to help Keesh finish an essay. As day breaks, Wolfie is getting up the courage to confess a secret to VJ at a party.
  Their choices are small yet momentous. The hours are small but feel very, very long. And when the night finally ends, the future is waiting – every last bit of it.
  Katherine Soper's play The Small Hours was written specifically for young people. It formed part of the 2019 National Theatre Connections Festival and was premiered by youth theatres across the UK. The play offers rich opportunities for a large cast of young performers.

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  Absalom and Achitophel

  John Dryden

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  John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by King David (2 Samuel 14-18) to mirror that faced by Charles II. Each monarch had a son whom a high-ranking minister attempted to use against him. James Scott, first Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, was detected planning a rebellion late in 1681, supposedly instigated by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was tried for high treason, and it is believed that Dryden wrote the poem in an effort to sway the jury in his trial. The fates of both Absalom (Monmouth) and Achitophel (Shaftesbury) are left unspecified at the end of the poem (Monmouth did rebel in 1685, after his father's death, and was executed, and Shaftesbury was acquitted), but we are left to surmise that their fates would resemble those of their Biblical counterparts: Absalom was killed against David's instructions and Achitophel hanged himself.The poem can be enjoyed without any special knowledge of either the Bible or seventeenth-century English history, but it is useful to understand why Monmouth (AKA Absalom) was such a useful tool to use against his father: Charles had many illegitimate offspring, but his wife was barren, so at his death the crown would pass (did pass) to his brother, James, who was Catholic, but Monmouth was Protestant as well as well-beloved by both the king and the people. England had good reason to dread a return of officially enforced Catholicism. The narrator's urbane attitude toward David's amatory adventures in the opening of the poem and his burlesque of the supposed Jebusitical plot (the "Popish Plot" of 1678) establish clearly his Tory bias in favor of the Establishment and his disdain of the panic caused by fear of Catholicism (Dryden himself converted to the Catholic faith at some time before 1685).

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