Intellect

This definitive publication of Point Blank’s early work is essential reading for students, audiences, actors and directors interested in radical new writing for performance. Comprehensive notes are provided to enable a range of potential re-stagings of the texts, and the critical essays offer readers new interpretations of the interplay between contemporary performance practice and the prevailing political climate.

Nothing to Declare asks you to imagine Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on safari in Beirut as it follows the trail of an obsessive wannabe design guru travelling through a middle-eastern war zone looking for inspiration. Operation Wonderland (shortlisted for a Critics Circle Award 2004) features an unlikely suicide bomber seeking to live out his fantasies and put a grim end to the magic of the Disneyesque theme park ‘Wonderland’, while Roses and Morphine sees the memories of war atrocities transformed into corrupted fairy tales in the archive of a mythical library.

The performance texts featured in this volume offer a radically new vision of twenty first century theatre. Subversive and satirical they challenge the prevailing myths and orthodoxies of contemporary culture and late twentieth century performance practice.

In his introduction, Professor John Bull contextualises Point Blank’s work in the wider tradition and recent history of British political theatre. In accompanying critical essays the two artistic directors highlight the trilogy’s interrogation of postmodern relativism and offer an insight into the company’s dramaturgical processes which transform theoretical ideas into mythical scenarios of bleak comic absurdity and visually-striking theatrical metaphor.

Liz Tomlin and Steve Jackson founded Point Blank in 1999 and have worked together on all the productions featured in this volume. Steve Jackson is Creative Director of the Open Performance Centre in Sheffield where Point Blank are resident, Liz Tomlin is currently a Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and publishes on contemporary performance and new writing. John Bull is Professor of Film and Drama at the University of Reading and author of the seminar texts, New British Political Playwrights and Stage Right.