Stephens - Stephens Plays 3: Harper Regan, Punk Rock, Marine Parade and On the Shore of the Wide World

Simon StephensPlays: 3On the Shore of the Wide World,
Marine Parade, Harper Regan, Punk RockOn the Shore of the Wide World: Stephens has developed into a brilliant writer of immense imagination with an acute observation of peoples foibles [His] great feat is to get intuitively inside his characters hearts and heads. With a light touch, and dashes of humour, he explores adolescence, fatherhood and the fears attached to growing old. IndependentMarine Parade: [A] moving and melancholy play, interspersed with music, which explores love in several of its more obtuse guises. The StageHarper Regan: an acutely perceptive and compassionate study of a brave and likeable woman trying to make sense of her life after it has been blighted by several different kinds of crisis. There is an unsentimental compassion in the writing, and a tough refusal to surrender to depression and despair, that I found genuinely uplifting. GuardianSimon Stephens began his theatrical career in the literary department of the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers Programme. GuardianSimon Stephens began his theatrical career in the literary department of the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers Programme.

His plays for theatre include Bluebird (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1998, directed by Gordon Anderson); Herons (Royal Court Theatre, 2001); Port (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2002); One Minute (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2003 and Bush Theatre, London, 2004); Christmas (Bush Theatre, 2004); Country Music (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 2004); On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange Theatre and National Theatre, London, 2005); Motortown (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2006); Pornography (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hanover, 2007; Edinburgh Festival/Birmingham Rep, 2008 and Tricycle Theatre, London, 2009); Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008); Sea Wall (Bush Theatre, 2008/Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2009); Heaven (Traverse Theatre, 2009); Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, London, and Royal Exchange Theatre, 2009); The Trial of Ubu (Essen Schauspielhaus/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2010); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky (co-written with David Eldridge and Robert Holman; Lyric Hammersmith, London, 2010); Marine Parade (co-written with Mark Eitzel; Brighton International Festival, 2010); T5 (Traverse Theatre, 2010); and Wastwater (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2011). His radio plays include Five Letters Home to Elizabeth (BBC Radio 4, 2001) and Digging (BBC Radio 4, 2003). His screenwriting includes an adaptation of Motortown for Film4 (2009); the two-part serial Dive (with Dominic Savage) for Granada/BBC (2009); and a short film adaptation of Pornography for Channel 4s Coming Up series (2009). Awards include the Pearson Award for Best New Play, 2001, for Port; Olivier Award for Best New Play for On the Shore of the Wide World, 2005; and for Motortown German critics in Theater Heutes annual poll voted him Best Foreign Playwright, 2007.

I read a lot of plays. I read them for pleasure and for inspiration and for work at the Lyric Hammersmith. The process always contains that contradiction. Whether Im reading my favourite plays or reading the first awkward attempts of a nascent writer, I find that my mind is always being asked to imagine the practicalities of a theatrical experience, figuring out the mechanics of stage directions and mapping the shape of behaviour, at the same time as absorbing the sound and image of the words. At its best its the most remarkable form of escape. Its why metaphor is so fundamental to the art of playwriting.

Playwrights ask their audiences to imagine images and movements and sounds on stage in order to allow them to imagine other possibilities and explore other ideas or other worlds. All the while this attempt is made in the hope that first the reader and then the audience might understand his or her own worlds afresh. I very rarely re-read my own plays once they have been produced for the first time. I think as a writer I have a kind of restlessness. This may change of course. I turned forty last weekend.

Its not out of the question that this restlessness might calm down. I find for now, though, that my interest is always on what Ill write next. I dont have the time to re-read plays that feel as finished as I can possibly make them at the time of production. The collecting together of several plays for publication, though, forces me to do this. Partly so I can check the meticulous work of the copy-editor. Partly so I can try and make sense of their collective identity.

I read these plays this morning together for the first time. It was the first time Id read On the Shore of the Wide World since its production in 2005. It was the first time Id read