In a broken world, two girls meet an extraordinary creature. The Skriker is a shapeshifter and death portent. She can be an old woman, a child, a young man. She is a faerie come from the Underworld to pursue and entrap them, through time and space, through this world and her own. The Skriker was originally produced at the National Theatre, London, in 1994. It was revived at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2015, as part of the Manchester International Festival, starring Maxine Peake, directed by Sarah Frankcom and featuring specially commissioned music by Nico Muhly and Antony of Antony and the Johnsons. The Skriker is also available in the volume Caryl Churchill Plays: Three.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Playing for time explores connections between theatre time, the historical moment and fictional time. Geraldine Cousin persuasively argues that a crucial characteristic of contemporary British theatre is its preoccupation with instability and danger, and traces images of catastrophe and loss in a wide range of recent plays and productions. The diversity of the texts that are examined is a major strength of the book. In addition to plays by contemporary dramatists, Cousin analyses staged adaptations of novels, and productions of plays by Euripides, Strindberg and Priestley. A key focus is Stephen Daldry's award-winning revival of Priestley's An Inspector Calls, which is discussed in relation both to other Priestley 'time' plays and to Caryl Churchill's apocalyptic Far Away. Lost children are a recurring motif: Bryony Lavery's Frozen, for example, is explored in the context of the Soham murders (which took place while the play was in production at the National Theatre), whilst three virtually simultaneous productions of Euripides' Hecuba are interpreted with regard to the Beslan massacre of schoolchildren.

These new essays explore the ways in which contemporary dramatists have retold or otherwise made use of myths, fairy tales and legends from a variety of cultures, including Greek, West African, North American, Japanese, and various parts of Europe. The dramatists discussed range from well-established playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Timberlake Wertenbaker to new theatrical stars such as Sarah Ruhl and Tarell Alvin McCraney. The book contributes to the current discussion of adaptation theory by examining the different ways, and for what purposes, plays revise mythic stories and characters. The essays contribute to studies of literary uses of myth by focusing on how recent dramatists have used myths, fairy tales and legends to address contemporary concerns, especially changing representations of women and the politics of gender relations but also topics such as damage to the environment and political violence.

Theatre and Ghosts brings theatre and performance history into dialogue with the flourishing field of spectrality studies. Essays examine the histories and economies of the material operations of theatre, and the spectrality of performance and performer.

This book considers the representation of madness in contemporary British theatre, examining the rich relationship between performance and mental health, and questioning how theatre can potentially challenge dominant understandings of mental health. Carefully, it suggests what it means to represent madness in theatre, and the avenues through which such representations can become radical, whereby theatre can act as a site of resistance. Engaging with the heterogeneity of madness, each chapter covers different attributes and logics, including: the constitution and institutional structures of the contemporary asylum; the cultural idioms behind hallucination; the means by which suicide is apprehended and approached; how testimony of the mad person is interpreted and encountered. As a study that interrogates a wide range of British theatre across the past 30 years, and includes a theoretical interrogation of the politics of madness, this is a crucial work for any student or researcher, across disciplines, considering the politics of madness and its relationship to performance.

Arts therapists are becoming increasingly interested in process as it is manifested in their work. The multiplicity of levels at which process operates is the theme of this new book. What happens during a therapy session is examined, as are the client's response, which is experienced through the medium of the art form itself, and the evolution of the relationship between therapist and client. Perspectives from across the arts therapy spectrum are included, with contributions from practitioners in dramatherapy, play therapy, art therapy, music therapy and dance movement therapy. Re-evaluating the nature of the practice, Process in the Arts Therapies expands and develops the theory.