Features the plays Debris, Osama the Hero, After the End and Love and Money. These four plays are linked by their characters' desperate need to believe that there is more to life than the often brutal worlds in which they find themselves. Kelly's remarkable debut Debris finds humour and pathos in a spectacularly dysfunctional family unit. The harrowing Osama the Hero shows a group of neighbours taking ill-defined revenge on an odd-ball teenager in a climate of fear. In After the End a woman discovers she has been rescued from Armageddon by a paranoid ex-colleague with a nuclear bunker in his garden. And in a fractured narrative Love and Money portrays a marriage driven to brutal destruction by financial pressures.

‘Without doubt, Kelly is one of the most multi-talented British playwrights to emerge in the past decade.’ Aleks Sierz ‘A taut, compelling thriller and a modern-day spin on Lord of the Flies, exploring group behaviour and moral equivocation.’ Financial Times (on DNA) ‘A cast-iron understanding of the morally bankrupt way we live now.’ Daily Telegraph (on Orphans) ‘A celebration of naughtiness and questioning, it's a raucous, skin-crawling treat.’ Guardian (on Our Teacher's a Troll)

Gary's not stupid. He just dares to see the world differently. In the class room and on the estate, he provokes without intent. When another act of violence unsettles those around him, Gary must shoulder the blame. A visceral rollercoaster of a play by one of Britain's hottest writers. Raw, angry and urgent, this is an explosive piece of work.

Helen and Danny keep themselves to themselves. But the outside world comes crashing into their lives one day when Helen's brother turns up. Covered in blood. Dennis Kelly's new play is a thrilling contemporary suspense story which takes its audience on a chilling journey into a world just outside the front door. This disturbing urban drama has it's world premiere at the Traverse Theatre on 31st July 2009, reuniting the team that brought Kelly's play After The End to the Traverse Theatre in 2005. After a month's run at the Traverse, it transfers to Birmingham Rep and the Soho Theatre (London).

David conducts an office romance by e-mail. He has love at his fingertips. But a shocking admission unravels his relationship piece by chilling piece. Jess loves David. She believes happiness can be bought – but it doesn’t come cheap in a world of easy credit. Jess and David’s ideal blend of love and money is killing them. Funny but heart wrenching, this ingenious drama dares us to enter a dislocated world of bad debts and even worse desires. Love and Money opened at the Manchester Royal Exchange in October 2006 with a transfer to the Young Vic, London.

A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their otherwise fractious lives, where’s the incentive to put things right? DNA is a poignant and, sometimes, hilarious tale with a very dark heart. A contemporary play for younger people, DNA opened at the National Theatre in February 2008

They were all in the pub when the explosion happened. Louise wakes up to find herself trapped with Mark, who has saved her life. Mark is always prepared for the worst and has everything he thinks they will need to survive; tinned chilli, Dungeons and Dragons and a knife - now all they need to do is to wait until it's safe to go outside. Can they survive the attack? Can they survive each other? After The End received its world premiere at The Traverse Theatre in August 2005.

This edited collection brings together a team of internationally prominent academics and delivers cutting-edge discourse on the strongly emerging tradition of experimentation in contemporary British theatre - redefining what the dramatic stands for today. Each chapter of the collection focuses on influential contemporary plays and playwrights.

If you could lie without flinching, corrupt without caring and succeed at all costs – how far could you go...how much could you make? From the early promise of the 70s through to unrelenting capitalism of the 80s and 90s, follow Gorge on the journey from innocence to savage greed and knotted honesty, as he invents three golden rule for success, whatever the cost. An electrifying dark tale.

In a context of financial crisis that has often produced a feeling of identity crisis for the individual, the theatre has provided a unifying forum, treating spectators as citizens. This book critically deals with representative plays and playwrights who have stood out in the UK and internationally in the post-recession era, delivering theatre that in the process of being truthful to the contemporary experience has also redefined theatrical form and content. Built around a series of case-studies of seminal contemporary plays exploring issues of social and political crisis, the volume is augmented by interviews with UK and international directors, artistic directors and the playwrights whose work is examined. As well as considering UK stage productions, Angelaki analyses European, North American and Australian productions, of post-2000 plays by writers including: Caryl Churchill, Mike Bartlett, Dennis Kelly, Simon Stephens, Martin Crimp, debbie tucker green, Duncan Macmillan, Nick Payne and Lucy Prebble. At the heart of the analysis and of the plays discussed is an appreciation of what interconnects artists and audiences, enabling the kind of mutual recognition that fosters the feeling of collectivity. As the book argues, this is the state whereby the theatre meets its social imperative by eradicating the distance between stage and spectator and creating a genuinely shared space of ideas and dialogue, taking on topics including the economy, materialism, debt culture, the environment, urban protest, social media and mental health. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain demonstrates that such contemporary playwriting invests in and engenders moments of performative reciprocity and spirituality so as to present the audience with a cohesive collective experience.

Drawing primarily on Judith Butler’s, Jacques Derrida’s, Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s reflections on precariousness/precarity, the Self and the Other, ethical responsibility/obligation, forgiveness, hos(ti)pitality and community, the essays in this volume examine the various ways in which contemporary British drama and theatre engage with ‘the precarious’. Crucially, what emerges from the discussion of a wide range of plays – including Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go, Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies and In the Republic of Happiness, Tim Crouch’s The Author, Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties, David Greig’s The American Pilot and The Events, Dennis Kelly’s Love and Money, Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur, Robin Soans’s Talking to Terrorists, Simon Stephens’s Pornography, theTheatre Uncut project, debbie tucker green’s dirty butterfly and Laura Wade’s Posh – is the observation that contemporary (British) drama and theatre often realises its thematic and formal/structural potential to the full precisely by reflecting upon the category and the episteme of precariousness, and deliberately turning audience members into active participants in the process of negotiating ethical agency.

Heroic commander of the Prussian cavalry, the Prince of Homburg dreams of victory, glory and fame. But reckless disobedience during a crucial military operation leads the Prince into his greatest battle yet. The creative team behind the Donmar’s critically acclaimed production of Life Is A Dream present Von Kleist’s poetic masterpiece, which is considered to be one of the most haunting and beautiful plays of the nineteenth century, exploring honour, courage, ambition and love. Adapted for stage by acclaimed British writer Dennis Kelly, this is an exciting new adaptation of a classic of European literature.

Subtitled A Klezmer Piece, The Fourth Gate was written in 2002 and is based on traditional Hassidic stories. This play depicts a lost world where the celestial and the everyday go hand in hand, where poverty and ignorance may be signs of ultimate richness and wisdom, where searching for your spiritual leader can be a life-long goal. Karpati's wit and humour turn this whimsical storytelling into a haunting experience.

In recent years British theatre has seen a renaissance in playwriting that has been accompanied by a proliferation of writing awards, new writing groups and a ceaseless quest for fresh, authentic voices that will ensure the vitality and relevance of theatre in the twenty-first century. Rewriting the Nation is a perfect companion to Britain's burgeoning theatre writing scene that will prove invaluable to anyone wanting a better appreciation of why British theatre - at its best - remains one of the most celebrated and vigorous throughout the world. The books opens by defining what is meant by 'new writing' and providing a study of the system in which it is produced. It considers the work of the leading 'new writing' theatres, such as the Royal Court, the Traverse, the Bush, the Hampstead and the National theatres, together with the London fringe and the work of touring companies. In the second part, Sierz provides a fascinating survey of the main preoccupations and issues that have characterised new plays in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that while under New Labour economic, political and social change continued apace, generating anxiety and uncertainty in the population, theatre has been able to articulate not only those anxieties and uncertainties but also to offer powerful images of the nation. At a time when the idea of a national identity is hotly debated, British theatre has made its own contribution to the debate by offering highly individual and distinctive visions of who we are and what we might want to become. In examining the work of many of the acclaimed and emerging British playwrights the book serves to provide a narrative of contemporary British playwriting. Just as their work has at times reflected disturbing truths about our national identity, Sierz shows how British playwrights are deeply involved in the project of rewriting the nation.

From Morning To Midnight, among the most frequently performed German Expressionist works, charts the life of a cashier who steals money from the bank and flees to Berlin. The un-named protagonist's bid to escape his middle-class daily life is ultimately frustrated. It is a popular piece in which Kaiser satirized the cheapness and futility of modern society. His hero, a kind of machine-age Everyman, searches everywhere for some kind of fulfilment - in commercial sex, in salvationist religion - but discovers through a series of nightmarish episodes that the world is deceitful and illusory. In the end, disillusioned and pursued by the police, he takes his own life. A new version by Dennis Kelly, to play at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre in November 2013, as part of the National’s 50th Anniversary Season.

Across the UK thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to publicspending since WWII – cuts which are the turning point of a generation, undermining the welfare state, higher education and the arts in one fell swoop. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UK’s leading dramatists. Drama groups, universities, youth clubs and theatre companies nationwide joined the event, staging their own versions of the shorts in a national theatrical uprising. Now published in this new collection, Theatre Uncut contains these short plays, addressing audiences who want to think about what the budget cuts really mean, and who they are really hitting. A debate is underway. Protest might begin, minds might be changed, views challenged, ideas formed. Theatre Uncut is a response to a situation that we cannot control, and over which we had no say. Click below to hear an interview with Libby Brodie and Hannah Price of Theatre Uncut:

Across the UK thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to public spending since WWII – cuts which are the turning point of a generation, undermining the welfare state, higher education and the arts in one fell swoop. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UK’s leading dramatists. Theatre Uncut’s flagship event took place in London from 16- 19 March 2011. Drama groups, universities, youth clubs and theatre companies nationwide joined the event, staging their own versions of the shorts in a national theatrical uprising. Now published in this new collection, Theatre Uncut containsthese short plays, addressing audiences who want to think about what the budget cuts really mean, and who they are really hitting. A debate is underway. Protest might begin, minds might be changed, views challenged, ideas formed. Theatre Uncut is a response to a situation that we cannot control, and over whichwe had no say.