Interview: A Fugue For Eight Actors
by Jean-Claude van Itallie
At a New York employment agency, four faceless interviewers interview four applicants seeking jobs ranging from Bank President to Floor-washer, but they seem to be just going through the motions. A psychiatrist, priest, gym instructor and politician seem equally unable or unwilling to provide help. Elsewhere in the city, tragedies unfold unremarked. The interviews go on. . . Eight actors create a surreal and dreamlike snapshot of modern America using words, movement, music and dance, in this seminal work from the 1960s.
Interview was first performed as part of a trilogy of short plays under the title America Hurrah at LaMama Experimental Theatre Club in New York in 1964-65. It transferred to the Pocket Theatre Off-Broadway, where it ran for 640 performances before touring to the Royal Court in London, and to Australia.
Five Kinds Of Silence
by Shelagh Stephenson
Billy is dead.
His daughters have shot him - once in the stomach, then once more, to make sure he's really gone. His wife Mary knows they'll have to call the police - but there's his bottle of whisky to get through first.. Five Kinds of Silence is a powerful play telling the story of a family living under the power of the vicious Billy. The major themes in the play are control and how the family is actually bonded by abuse. Exploring the ideas of abuse being continued from childhood, how abused children may go on to abuse their own children and isolation from the outside world.
Winner of a Sony award for Best Original Drama and also winner of UK Writers Guild Best Original Play, Five Kinds of Silence was first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2000.
This play explores adult themes of abuse and violence and is not suitable for under-16s.