Included in this volume are Caryl Churchill's Vinegar Tom, about witchcraft in the seventeenth century; Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi, an account of the lives of four young women by Pam Gems; Louise Page's Tissue, about breast cancer; and Aurora Leigh, adapted by Michelene Wandor herself from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel. Each play has an afterword by its author, and the volume opens with an introduction by the editor.

A play taking place in London during 1979 and in Victorian Africa explores the effects of sexual repression and stereotypes on people's identities.

The plays in this volume represent the best of Churchill's writing up to and including her emergence onto the international theatre scene with "Cloud Nine." The volume also contains a new introduction by the author as well as short prefaces to each play.

Premiered at the Royal National Theatre, this extraordinary play by one of Britain's leading playwrights combines English folk tales with modern urban life. In terms of its language alone, it is as exciting and challenging on the page as on the stage.
The play follows the Skriker, -a shapeshifter and death portent, ancient and damaged-, in its search for love and revenge as it pursues two young women to London, changing its shape at every new encounter. Along with the Skriker come Rawheadandbloodybones, the Kelpie, the Green Lady, Black Dog and more, till the whole country is swarming...

-Bristles with the intelligence and insight of a major writer.- -Financial Times
-Brilliantly ... evoke s] the mood of a country through snapshot images.- -Guardian
-An act of moral commitment as well as theatrical virtuosity.- -London Sunday Times
Mad Forest explores the reactions of ordinary people to confused events, focusing in particular on two families. What emerges is the dreadful damage done to people's lives by repression and the painful difficulties of lasting change.
Caryl Churchill's play about the Romanian revolution was written after...

-Churchill, who constantly reinvents dramatic form, has come up with something compelling and strange: an intimate revue about the increasing surreality of modern life.- -Guardian
-Puts one in mid of the painter Magritte...Each brief scene is preceded by doomy, tabloid television 'news music', and a graphic announcing some heavy topical subject - The War in Bosnia, for instance, or the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Then the performers... play a scene that has nothing to do with its title...The piece creates a haunting impression of urban alienation, self-obsession and...

-Chilling... Churchill's play seems to reinvent drama with every other line.- - Village Voice
-A masterpiece from one of the most valuable playwrights working today. Churchill is that rare dramatist who imagines different forms and even invented languages every time out.- -Chicago Tribune
-Deeply disturbing. Far Away has the picturesque form and gentle rhythms of a fairy tale told at bedtime. But it also finds a grating alarm in traditional sounds of comfort, from the lapping of a stream and the lilt of a lullaby to the hesitating confidences exchanged by a boy...

Written for Joint Stock, this theatre company's workshop for the play was "sexual politics," thus giving Caryl Churchill the idea for her parallel between colonial and sexual oppression. Act I takes place in Victorian Africa, whilst Act II is set in modern London. Much interplay is made of gender and colour: for example, Clive, the white settler, has a black servant, Joshua, who is played by a white because he wants to be what the whites want him to be. Hilarious and thought-provoking.

Serious Money is a Jonsonian satire about capitalism running rampant and unchecked. All money corrupts and serious money corrupts absolutely in the play's world of shady financial deals, insider trading and get rich quick wheeler dealers of both sexes. Not only does the play capture almost every aspect of dirty dealing and money grubbing from London to Wall Street, but it does so in extremely ingenious rhymed couplets

Comedy / Casting: 4m, 3f w/doubling / Scenery: 2 exteriors

The time-shifting comedy by the author of Top Girls created a sensation Off-Broadway directed by Tommy Tune. Here we are in 1880 darkest but British Africa as portrayed in old movies, plays and novels. Only with a difference. Both parody and spoof of the Victorian Empire and its rigid attitudes especially towards sex. There is Clive, a British functionary, his wife Betty (played by a man), their daughter Victoria (a rag doll), Clive's friend Harry an explorer, Mrs. Saunders who runs about dressed in a riding habit, Clive's son...