Cockroach (NHB Modern Plays)

By Sam Holcroft

A dark and compelling vision of a world infected by violence.

A seemingly normal detention in a seemingly normal modern-day comprehensive school. A teacher valiantly battles on with biology revision. She believes only education will set her pupils free. For outside the classroom, the world is in the middle of a long and bloody war.

Despite her best efforts, the tide of conflict is soon lapping at the school gates and, one by one, pupils and teacher are pulled under as their hopes and dreams float away from them.

'Sam Holcroft is uncompromising in her ideas and deeply ambitious for the power of theatre. It's a long time since a young writer has thrilled me this much' - Vicky Featherstone, director of the National Theatre of Scotland's production of Cockroach

'hauntingly powerful... a playwright brave enough to do battle with the big ideas' - Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Jun 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780016290

Sam Holcroft

Sam Holcroft is a playwright, winner of the Windham Campbell Prize for Literature. Her plays include: A Mirror (Almeida Theatre, London, 2023); Rules for Living (National Theatre, London, 2015); The Wardrobe for National Theatre Connections; Edgar & Annabel, part of the Double Feature season in the Paintframe at the National Theatre; Dancing Bears, part of the Charged season for Clean Break at Soho Theatre and Latitude Festival; While You Lie at the Traverse, Edinburgh; Pink, part of the Women, Power and Politics season at the Tricycle; Vanya, adapted from Chekhov, at The Gate; and Cockroach, co-produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and Traverse (nominated for Best New Play 2008, by the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland and shortlisted for the John Whiting Award, 2009). In 2013, she wrote The House Taken Over, a libretto for opera, adapted from Cortázar, for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Académie Européenne de Musique. She received the Tom Erhardt Award in 2009, was the Pearson Writer-in-Residence at the Traverse Theatre, 2009–10, and the Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre Studio from 2013–14. In 2014, she received a Windham Campbell Prize for Literature in the drama category.