We're delighted that the next two titles in the Clive Barker Playscripts series are now available in the store!
Hunters in the Snow is set in a medieval, Breughel-inspired landscape and features a character called The Dutchman - a dark, undead witchfinder, summoned by mysterious means - with traits that would later feed into Clive's Mamoulian and Pinhead characters. Staged in the illustrious Everyman Theatre in Liverpool for just two nights in 1973, this text is a must-read for anyone interested in reading an early iteration of themes that would continue to infuse Clive's writing for many years.
Crazyface was written as a piece commissioned by The Cockpit Youth Theatre in London in 1982. The play follows the trials of a family of fools - particularly the path of Tyl Eulenspiegel as he becomes unwittingly embroiled in a frantic Europe-wide scramble for control of a secret for which nations will go to war...
Hunters in the Snow and Crazyface are available now in the store.
- Hunters in the Snow: Paperback first edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 118 pages, $7 plus shipping
- Crazyface: Paperback edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 182 pages, $10 plus shipping
These two join The Magician and The History of the Devil as the first four of Clive's plays to be published by the Archive. Further titles will become available over coming months!
"These plays are not finished things, they're invitations to collective work... These are blueprints, not houses. I am laying out the ground rules for a circus, and inviting wild beasts, clowns, and strippers on to parade themselves in any and every combination.
"What it comes down to is that these are texts which are meant to be starting places for very particular intellectual and artistic adventures. And they are particular to the group of people who have been gathered there to have the adventure. They are deliberately free-form. They are deliberately overpacked. They are deliberately ragged, unhoned, raw. I make no apology for any of that. They are intended to be, I hope, inspirational rather than repressive.
"They are ways to say to actors and directors and designers, 'Here are some ideas, here are some lines, here are some situations. Make masks, make dance, make music, make mime, make whatever you want to personalise this experience.'"Clive Barker
