Latest journal: Volume 24, Issue 3 - Contemporary Theatre Review

This issue is available on Taylor & Francis Online: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gctr20/24/3

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Introduction: Dealing with Martin Crimp

Vicky Angelaki In late 2011 Dan Rebellato and I had an idea for a conference focusing on the work of Martin Crimp.We share an ongoing interest in Crimp’s work and knew very well that as opposed to how it may have felt a few years ago, Crimp’s recognition as one of the most important playwrights of our time was on an upward curve. Further to the wide range of Crimp’s activity – he writes, adapts, produces versions of classics, and translates with notable regularity – this was also owing to the interest that Crimp’s work had been steadily receiving from scholars, practitioners and, of course, audiences, in the UK and further afield. At the same time, despite this widening attention, Crimp’s work never featured quite as prominently as that of other contemporary playwrights in, for example, collective volumes that deal with the theatre of a given period. This may be understandable – Crimp’s writing does not fall neatly in a singular period of contemporary theatre, as he has been steadily working professionally since the early 1980s. Attempts on Her Life (1997) may still be considered Crimp’s most well known play, but it is far from the only standout text. By the time this play came to feature in the Royal Court’s repertoire in the late 1990s, Crimp had already been attracting attention from critics as well as audiences for a substantial period of time, particularly since his later plays at the Orange Tree Theatre in the 1980s. It also seemed the right moment to address the distinguishing features of Crimp’s work, the fact that it is refreshingly unpredictable and reliably non-mainstream. By the time of the conference two full-length monographs had already been published on Crimp’s work,while there was also an increasing number of UK and international academic articles and book chapters. It was a good time to dedicate an event to Crimp’s writing, celebrating it in a public forum. This was our motivation for the conference as well as for presenting the work emerging from the event in Contemporary Theatre Review. This Special Issue serves as a medium for documenting and expanding on the rich dialogue that we enjoyed at the conference, but also, most importantly, for sharing this conversation with a broader audience. [read more]