Happy New Year!

As we get back to work this week after the Christmas break, we've got plenty to look forward to in 2018...

We're delighted to be continuing to release titles in the new series of Clive's play scripts as affordable paperbacks.  It's been great to hear all the positive comments about The Magician and The History of the Devil - a huge thank you to everyone who has ordered them (and we hope to see productions springing up worldwide!).

Our next two titles are Crazyface and Hunters in the Snow, set for publication in a few weeks' time.

Crazyface was written by Clive in 1982 for the Cockpit Youth Theatre in London and centres around the fool Tyl Eulenspiegel as he stumbles across a secret that nations are prepared to kill for.

Hunters in the Snow has never before been published and is a play from 1973 inspired by the works of Breugel. It includes a character called The Dutchman, originally played by Doug Bradley, that Clive would later see echoes of in the dialogue and bearing of Hellraiser's lead cenobite, Pinhead.

And... we'll be adding many more images from the Archive to the gallery here, with a programme to add at least one new image each and every day this month! Leading off today is a double with an FX storyboard from Hellraiser: Bloodline and the cover of a US presskit for Galilee.

In the meantime, we continue to work with Clive on the Imaginer art books - we'll have a shipping update for Imaginer 5 later this month...

Here's to a great 2018!

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Clive Barker Playscripts

For a long time we've wanted to share the texts of Clive's plays which are held here in the archive - so we're delighted to announce that as of November 2017 we'll be publishing a series of full scripts.

The first two titles - The Magician and The History of the Devil - are available now through the Archive store.

This is the first edition of The Magician - a one-act play in the Commedia dell' Arte tradition. Originally performed by The Dog Company in 1978, this first publication of the full script includes 14 photos of the original production, poster art and manuscript pages from the archive.

The History of the Devil is one of Clive's most successful plays, with productions continuing around the world long after it was first performed by The Dog Company in 1980. This new publication of the full script includes 7 photos of the original production, poster art and manuscript pages from the archive.

• The Magician: Paperback first edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 92 pages, $6 plus shipping

• The History of the Devil: Paperback edition with cover art by Clive Barker, 188 pages, $9 plus shipping

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