MALAPROP: plays (NHB Modern Plays)

MALAPROP Theatre is an award-winning collective of Irish theatremakers, who seek to challenge, delight and speak to the world we live in (even when imagining different ones). This volume brings together four of their bold, playful and genre-spanning plays, all premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival between 2017 and 2023. In Everything Not Saved, ex-lovers argue about when they were happiest, police officers rewrite history, and Rasputin dances like no one's watching. Oh, and also the Queen is there. Before You Say Anything questions how everyone can be safe at the same time. A time-travelling set of interweaving stories exploring injustice, freedom and bravery. Where Sat the Lovers is about codes, hallucinations, Isaac Newton, war crimes, seeing meaning where there's none and vice versa. In an age of misinformation, how do you know if you know the right things? HOTHOUSE tackles climate breakdown with big ideas, a lot of laughs, and some truly grotesque cabaret numbers. Cruise ships, horny/murderous songbirds, fecund/fatalistic rabbits, loving/bruising parents and Minnie Riperton all make an appearance in this play with songs, which asks if things can ever get better. MALAPROP Theatre are Carys D. Coburn, John Gunning, Breffni Holahan, Molly O'Cathain, Maeve O'Mahony, Claire O'Reilly and Carla Rogers. 'MALAPROP have quickly distinguished themselves as one of Ireland's most exciting emerging companies' Ruth McGowan, Director, Dublin Fringe Festival (2018-23) 'A company of real ambition. One which is using theatrical form to grapple with the complexities of a world where the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet and where what we believe can be recalibrated not just on a daily basis but minute by minute' Lyn Gardner, Stage Door 'Reminiscent of early Caryl Churchill... this is thinking theatre at its best' Irish Independent

Carys D. Coburn (they/them) is a writer and theatre maker based in Dublin. Their plays include Boys and Girls (Dublin Fringe Festival 2013, winner of Best New Writing Award, nominated for the Stewart Parker Trust Award); Drawing Crosses on a Dusty Windowpane (Dublin Fringe 2015); Citysong (winner of the Verity Bargate Award; Abbey Theatre Dublin and Soho Theatre London 2019); Briseis after the Black and Blackcatfishmusketeer (Dublin Fringe 2016); and This is a Room (Dublin Theatre Festival 2017). They are a collaborating writer with MALAPROP Theatre, with whom they have co-written JERICHO (Bewleys Cafe Theatre, 2017), Everything Not Saved (Dublin Fringe, 2017), Before You Say Anything (Dublin Fringe, 2020), Where Sat the Lovers (Dublin Fringe, 2021), and HOTHOUSE (Dublin Fringe, 2023). Carys D. Coburn was formerly known as Dylan Coburn Gray.