The award-winning David Edgar is arguably one of the greatest living playwrights, recently receiving a Writers’ Guild of GB award for his Outstanding Contribution to British playwriting. He has had more than sixty of his original plays, adaptations and translations performed around the world, including for the Royal Shakespeare Company: Destiny, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, Maydays, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Pentecost, The Prisoner’s Dilemma, Written On The Heart and A Christmas Carol, and for the National Theatre: Albert Speer and The Shape of the Table.

This is a collection of some of Edgar’s plays, broadcast on BBC Radio:

A Movie Starring Me – Michelle is a TV star known throughout the world. When she agrees to appear in a London stage production of ‘The Seagull’, one of her fans, Tripper, decides this is the opportunity to make his heroine aware of his existence…

Maydays – An epic play that ranges across continents and decades to explore how young activists who came of age in the 1960s subsequently made the leap from the far left to the die-hard right.

The Secret Parts – Counsellor Helena Kerr, Chair of the Social Services Committee on Birmingham City’s Council, discovers the body of her young gay clerk, Ben Logan, lying in a council house corridor bludgeoned to death. Helena has immediate suspicions about the identity of the murderer. She suspects her main political opponent, Councillor John Malcolm, and sets out to prove it.

Destiny – David Edgar’s brilliant play about a National Front-like political party, with an all-star cast. The play analyses how and why the far-right National Front was becoming a genuine political force in the late 1970s. Edgar portrays the intersection of politics with human lives.

Trying It On – David Edgar made his performing debut in this solo show exploring the autobiographical background to his landmark theatre play, Maydays. The 70-year-old is confronted by his young self, 50 years after his political outlook was defined by the tumultuous events of 1968. Do they share the same beliefs? If not, is it the world that’s changed, or him? Why did his generation vote Brexit? Has he sold in or sold out?