Steve Waters: Shorts (NHB Modern Plays)

Five short plays from acclaimed playwright Steve Waters, all of them deeply personal accounts of his attempts to make sense of twenty-first-century Britain and an ever-changing world. From the migrant crisis in Europe to climate change and the increasing urbanisation of our green spaces, Waters turns his sensitive, thoughtful eye to the complex and challenging issues that face us today, moving from the personal to the political, and from the local to the global. Out of Your Knowledge explores our changing attitudes towards the landscape as Waters retraces the journey of John Clare, the 19th-century English poet who escaped his lunatic asylum in Essex and walked for over 100 miles to reach his home village. Told by a woman killed in a cycling accident, Death of a Cyclist is a poignant, bleakly comic monologue that imagines the moments after death, and our struggle to come to terms with the biggest shock of all. Set against the low hum of the War on Terror, Why Can’t We Live Together? is a kaleidoscopic vision of our times through the lives of one man and one woman. In a Vulnerable Place is a monologue documenting Waters’ own journey from the Norfolk Broads to the steppes of Mongolia to explore, first hand, what is happening to the natural world and the human heart. Finally, The Play About Calais, based on Waters' own visit to the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais and the people he met along the way, is an attempt to make sense of one of the most complex and divisive issues of our times. Steve Waters is a leading UK playwright whose plays include Limehouse, Temple and World Music (all at the Donmar Warehouse), and The Contingency Play (Bush Theatre). He ran the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University for several years, and now teaches Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His book, The Secret Life of Plays, is published by Nick Hern Books.