small hours (NHB Modern Plays)

By Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime

A collaborative theatre piece created by playwrights Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime with theatre director Katie Mitchell, small hours is an intimate dissection of the claustrophobic world of a new mother struggling to cope on her own.
It was first performed at Hampstead Theatre in 2011.
'theatre of the highest form of immersion and realism that I have experienced... It is breathtaking' - A Younger Theatre

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Jun 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780018447

Lucy Kirkwood

Lucy Kirkwood is a British playwright and screenwriter whose plays include: The Human Body (Donmar Warehouse, London, 2024); Rapture (promoted as That Is Not Who I Am, Royal Court Theatre, London, 2022); The Welkin (National Theatre, London 2020); Mosquitoes (National Theatre, 2017); The Children (Royal Court Theatre, 2016); Chimerica (Almeida Theatre and West End, 2013; winner of the 2014 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the 2013 Evening Standard Best Play Award, the 2014 Critics’ Circle Best New Play Award, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award); NSFW (Royal Court, 2012); small hours (co-written with Ed Hime; Hampstead Theatre, 2011); Beauty and the Beast (with Katie Mitchell; National Theatre, 2010); Bloody Wimmin, as part of Women, Power and Politics (Tricycle Theatre, 2010); it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now (Clean Break and Arcola Theatre, 2009; winner of the 2012 John Whiting Award); Hedda (Gate Theatre, London, 2008); and Tinderbox (Bush Theatre, 2008). She won the inaugural Berwin Lee UK Playwrights Award in 2013.

Book preview

Epub cover

Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime

small hours

art

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Original Production

Characters

small hours

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

This is the introduction to Luck Kirkwood Plays: One; the collection in which this play first appears.

I grew up on the border of Essex and London, and my maternal ancestors came from the Isle of Thanet, and I started thinking about Tinderbox at the end of four years of university in Edinburgh, as I prepared to go home. In 2006 it seemed to me like everything that had felt new and young and revolutionary for a while had revealed itself to be as old and reactionary as what came before it. So it was about change seeming impossible. A series of white men running the show. But it was also about how difficult change is for those at the sharp end of it. A country is a delicate organism and some parts are more exposed than others to the arrival of foreign bodies. I wanted to be honest but generous about this. Saul is a racist, but he is also a man who has been culturally and economically displaced by forces beyond