Martin Crimp
Martin Andrew Crimp (born 14 February 1956 in Dartford, Kent) is a British playwright. Early life and career The son of John Crimp, a British Rail signalling engineer, and his wife Jennie, Crimp's family moved in 1960 to Streatham where he attended a local primary school before winning a scholarship to Dulwich College. But when his father was transferred to York, he went to the nearby Pocklington School, where he showed an aptitude for languages, music, English literature, and theatre. He read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1975–78), where his first play Clang was staged by fellow student Roger Michell. Before establishing himself as a playwright, he put together An Anatomy, a collection of short stories, and also wrote a novel Still Early Days. These remain unpublished. His first six plays were performed at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. As he told Marsha Hanlon in an interview for the Orange Tree appeal brochure in 1991: "When the Orange Tree ran a workshop for local writers [in September 1981], I was invited to take part. The carrot was the chance of a lunchtime production, so I wrote Living Remains and the Orange Tree staged it – my first-ever produced play! I was so excited that I didn't think about the space where it was performed [then a room above a pub], but now I realise that the Orange Tree's intimacy and simplicity provided an extra layer of excitement." Seven of his plays, and his second Ionesco translation have also been presented at the Royal Court Theatre, London, where he became writer-in-residence in 1997. Professional career Playwright Crimp’s play Attempts on Her Life, which premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1997, was described by critic Aleks Sierz as the "event that secured his reputation as the most innovative, most exciting, and most exportable playwright of his generation" [Sierz, Aleks, Aleks, (2013) p.48]. The play presents a unique structure, as none of the lines are assigned to specific characters, and Crimp does not specify the number of actors required to perform the piece. The play consists of seventeen seemingly unrelated scenes in which groups of people provide contradictory descriptions of an absent protagonist, a woman who is discussed as a terrorist, the daughter of grieving parents, an artist, and even a new car. Through its deliberate fragmentation, Attempts on Her Life challenges the audience to reconsider their understanding of what constitutes a "play" and raises questions about the existence of individuals beyond the constructs we create. His other plays range from tragi-comic studies of suburban guilt and repression — Definitely the Bahamas (1987), Dealing with Clair (1989), The Country (2000) — via the satirical ‘entertainment’ In the Republic of Happiness (2012) — to powerful re-writings of Greek classics — Cruel & Tender (2004), The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema (2013). This unusual variety has led Vicky Angelaki to write: Crimp's work has successfully received numerous productions abroad. In Germany, he is considered to be "one of the