Lustgarten Plays: 1: A Day At the Racists; If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep; Black Jesus; Shrapnel: 34 Fragment

Description

The first play collection from Anders Lustgarten, "perhaps Britain's most visible and visibly engaged political playwright" (Time Out London), containing plays from the start of his career up to 2015 with the most recent play in the collection, Shrapnel, and one previously unpublished play. The volume includes an introduction by the playwright. A Day at the Racists (2010, Finborough Theatre) is a devastatingly timely examination of the rise of the BNP in London, which attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction: the political abandonment and betrayal of the working class by New Labour. If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep (Royal Court Theatre, 2013) offers an exploration of our current government's politics of austerity and a look at possible alternatives. Black Jesus (Finborough Theatre, 2013) unpicks the political complexities of Zimbabwe through the devastating personal journeys of two very different people, both scarred by one of Africa's most notorious dictatorships. Shrapnel (Arcola Theatre, 2015) takes as its subject The Roboski massacre is one of the most controversial episodes in the 'war on terror'. Piecing together the fragments of the tragedy, Anders Lustgarten's startling new play dares to ask what a massacre is made of. Kingmakers (Salisbury Playhouse, 2015) imagines ten years after the signing of Magna Carta when the barons' takeover isn't quite going to plan. With the peasants grumbling about enormous castles and broken promises, the threat of rebellion hangs in the air. This play has not previously been published. The Insurgents (Finborough Theatre, 2007) is Anders Lustgarten's look at contemporary London and its class divide. Private equity has turned the city into a high-fenced playground for a tax-exempt, big business elite. This play has not previously been published.

Anders Lustgarten is Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, where his first two plays, The Insurgents (2007) and Enduring Freedom (2008), were produced. Other work includes The Punishment Stories, (shortlisted for the 2007 Verity Bargate Award), an adaptation of Slawomir Mrozek's The Police (BAC 2007), The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie (2010) for the National Theatre Studio and If You Don't Let Us Dream Then We Won't Let You Sleep (Royal Court, 2013). Anders is a political activist, has taught on Death Row, been arrested by the Turkish secret police, and holds a PhD in Chinese politics from the University of California. He also won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwrights Award with a commission from the Royal Court in 2011.

Anders Lustgarten is the most internationally minded dramatist working in Britain today. . . . short, sharp play . . . the play makes its point with a controlled ferocity. Lustgarten works like a movie-maker. * Guardian on "Shrapnel" * Lustgarten's disgust is bracing as he begs to differ, big-time, from David Cameron . . . Lustgarten is right to castigate the cosiness of much political drama * Independent on "If You Don't Let Us Dream, We Won't Let You Sleep" * Set in the near future, Lustgarten's play has a feverish intensity . . . Black Jesus is absorbing and strikingly succinct * Evening Standard on "Black Jesus" * Though no play can "beat" the BNP, this play confirms it would be crazy for theatre to bury its head in the sand * Guardian on "A Day At the Racists" *