Storey Plays: 1: The Contractor; Home; Stages; Caring

Description

"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian) The Contractor: "A subtle and poetic parable about the nature and joy of skilled work, the meaning of community and the effect of its loss" (Observer); Home: "about the solitude and dislocation of madness and...the decline of Britain itself...part of the play's appeal is that Storey leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions...a play that contains within itself the still, sad music of humanity." (Guardian); Stages: "...an elegy for lost times and places, an obituary that has been free-associated by the corpse-to-be...Storey once said that a play 'lives almost in the measure that it escapes and refuses definition'. He has always been a writer who hints rather than states, let alone hectors." (The Times); Caring, a companion piece to Stages, reflects a reassessment and renegotiation of the conflict between life and art.

David Storey was born in Wakefield and is a Fellow of University College, London. His plays include The Restoration of Arnold Middleton (1967), which won the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright; The Contractor (1969), Home (1970) and The Changing Room (1972), all of which won the New York Critics Best Play of the Year Award; In Celebration (1975), which was adapted as a film in 1974 starring Alan Bates; Life Class (1975); and The Farm (1973). All of these plays were first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, while Early Days (1980), The March on Russia (1989) and Stages (1992) all premiered at the National Theatre.