Maydays (NHB Modern Plays)

Maydays tells the story of the twenty-somethings who came of age in 1968 and were drawn into revolutionary politics; of defection from East to West as well as from Left to Right. David Edgar's play is told through a number of interlocking stories, across three continents and twenty-five years of tumultuous history. The play was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican, London, in 1983, Maydays was revived in this new version, also by the RSC, in 2018. 'David Edgar's magnificent new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company is an epic, brilliantly plotted piece of writing that takes revolution as its theme' - The Financial Times on the 1983 production of Maydays

David Edgar was born into a theatre family and took up writing full time in 1972. In 1989, he founded Britain's first graduate playwriting course, at the University of Birmingham, of which he was director for ten years. His stage adaptations include Albie Sachs's Jail Diary, Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (both for the Royal Shakespeare Company), Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer (National Theatre) and Julian Barnes's Arthur & George (Birmingham Repertory Theatre), as well as a version of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder (Chichester Festival Theatre). He has written two community plays for Dorchester: Entertaining Strangers and A Time to Keep (with Stephanie Dale). His original plays for the RSC include Destiny, Maydays, Pentecost, The Prisoner's Dilemma and Written on the Heart. Other plays include Daughters of the Revolution and Mothers Against (Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Playing with Fire (National Theatre) and Testing the Echo (Out of Joint). He is the author of How Plays Work.