Some Explicit Polaroids

Written by Mark Ravenhill | Directed by David Oliver

Torn Space Theater continues its retrospective of contemporary British drama, building on our previous Western New York premieres of two plays by Sarah Kane and last season’s The Fastest Clock in the Universe by Philip Ridley.

The British theatre movement of the 1990’s that came to be known as “In-Yer-Face-Theatre” shook up what had become an otherwise cautious decade of playwriting. It renewed the position of the writer at the forefront of the theatre making process. Raw language and content relentlessly flung an edgy new energy at the disillusionment of heightened materialism and gave a cool and unsettling voice to Generation X.

Controversial British playwright Mark Ravenhill brought his own sensibilities to the movement and in SOME EXPLICIT POLAROIDS, his fifth play, he continues his explorations of human survival in the age of technology and hyper-consumerism, where the old guidelines of social cause and consciousness have slid into self obsession and lost identity. His brilliantly honed characters cross in unexpected ways as they reach out, clash and struggle for common ground.

In the play, hardcore activist Nick is back in the world after serving fifteen years in prison for the abduction and torture of a corporate opportunist. But he finds the world is a very different place – his once impassioned leftist girlfriend has abandoned her beliefs to become a mainstream politician, he gets involved with a group of 20-somethings lost in a culture swinging from self-help platitudes to self-medication, and his powerful nemesis from his reactionary past is desperately stalking him.