How to Hold Your Breath

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Zinnie Harris Drama Online - Zinnie Harris

Accordingly, it explores Harris’ fusion of the medieval and the contemporary in Dana’s story, including the appalling conditions she has to endure as a refugee, so as to offer a novel perspective on the debates regarding Europe, Brexit, and the refugee crisis. By this I mean plays that not only have a really contemporary sense of character, plot and dialogue, but are also written in a distinctly individual language whose texture is singular and personal. StephensSimon There are some plays which have moments in that, in a totally thrilling way, you wish you’d written. With impressive artistry, Harris uses a seemingly innocent encounter to wrench upon concepts of modern day morality. What does it mean in a play that talks about debt and Europe, that the villain thinks of himself as being in debt?It opens on a one-night stand where, in some funny exchanges, it emerges the man that Dana picked up mistook her for a prostitute. Coupled with Dana’s hallucinogenic visitations from both Shaeffer’s increasingly agitated Jarron and Peter Forbes’s amusingly prissy, quasi-angelic librarian and Featherstone almost seems to be interpreting ‘How To Hold Your Breath’ as taking place in its protagonist’s head. Her play The Wheel for the National Theatre of Scotland, directed by Vicky Featherstone, won a Fringe First Award, jointly won an Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Theatre Award and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

How to Hold Your Breath | Theatre in London - Time Out How to Hold Your Breath | Theatre in London - Time Out

Harris adapted and directed Julie, an adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie, for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2006. Amps up the desperation, bad thing on bad thing on bad thing, and has nothing whatsoever to say about it.Peake is in androgynous kit (very bad getting-on-for-jodhpur trousers) and sports the David Bowie crop she had as Hamlet. It’s a compelling performance well supported by Christine Bottomley as the suffering sister, Michael Shaeffer as the diabolical tempter and Peter Forbes as the ubiquitous librarian. Nothing ever really bad happens in Europe,” one sister tells another in Zinnie Harris’ nightmarish fantasy How To Hold Your Breath. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Maxine Peake (Dana) and Michael Shaeffer (Jarron) in How To Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris at the Royal Court. com/stage/2015/feb/11/how-to-hold-your-breath-review-maxine-peake-royal-court-theatre (accessed 3 December 2022).

How to Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris | Goodreads

The Scotsman theatre critic Joyce McMillan described the play as a "trail-blazing 21st century adaptation". Harris’ original play, The Scent of Roses, had its world premiere at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in 2022, [22] followed by a revival of Further than the Furthest Thing at the Young Vic in London the following year.

Only last year she was directing Lasha Bugadze’s The President has Come to See You, which explored the the invasion of Georgia, as part of a season of new plays from both Georgia and the Ukraine. Harris puts it in the context of the current EU crisis, brought about by misjudged debt, and imagines the consequences of a complete collapse of Europe’s economies. Along the way Dana is guided by a mysterious character known as the Librarian (Peter Forbes), who supplies her with a series of ‘how to’ books.