Nothing

by Lulu Raczka

Overview

In Nothing eight young people - including a Vandal, a Stalker and a Porn Girl - recount their experiences, capturing the apathy rampant in today's youth.

Yet Nothing is much more than a series of monologues. It is about - among other things - cupcakes, action films, crap television, shitting, sex, buses and stalking. It is about alienation and being young.

Initially written as eight monologues by Lulu Raczka (winner of the Sunday Times Young Playwriting Award), Nothing asks questions about the nature of theatre itself. In its original production by Barrel Organ Theatre the performers improvised a new cut with every performance, each starting the show without knowing which particular monologue they would be performing on that occasion. Nothing is thus a game for both performer and audience, but it is also a serious interrogation of the structures within which we live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783191932
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Series:	Oberon Modern Plays
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Lulu Raczka is a theatre-maker who began her career whilst studying at Warwick University. She is winner of the Sunday Times Young Playwriting Award and co-runs Barrel Organ Theatre

Editorial Reviews

Not since 2010 - Anya Reiss's Spur of the Moment at the Royal Court, London - has a first-time play felt so certain in both voice and intent…” —Matt Trueman, Financial Times.

“Playwright Ella Hickson announced herself at an Edinburgh fringe a few years back with a series of monologues. Now Lulu Raczka does the same, but in a voice so distinctive and fully formed it's hard to believe she's so young. In a series of intercutting monologues, she offers a snapshot of a generation who feels that the future has very little to offer them, and who are appalled and fascinated by the violence they encounter in everyday life.” —4*, Guardian

“A fiercely confrontational and intelligent piece, with a disarming truthfulness about the way we live today” —Time Out.

“Nothing announces a serious new talent to British theatre... a clear literary successor to Simon Stephens, Sarah Kane and Chris Thorpe” —Andrew Haydon

“An unblinkingly bleak vision of contemporary Britain” —Catherine Love

“Deceptively simple, this sequence of raw and disturbing monologues disguises an elaborate set of rules ensuring no performance is ever the same” —Robert Hewison, The Sunday Times

“A voice so distinctive and fully formed it's hard to believe she's so young.” —The Guardian

“a fiercely confrontational and intelligent piece, with a disarming truthfulness about the way we live today.” —Time Out

From the Publisher