Mark Ravenhill Joins Teaching Staff at Central

Central is pleased to announce that award-winning playwright Mark Ravenhill will join Central as a part time member of staff for the autumn 2023, teaching on its BA (Hons) Writing for Performance course.

Mark’s critically acclaimed work is some of the most widely performed of British late-twentieth and early twenty-first century theatre. His play Shopping and Fucking, shocked audiences when it opened at the Royal Court in 1996, positioning him at the forefront of what came to be known as ‘in yer face’ theatre (Sierz 2001). Subsequent plays include Faust is Dead, Handbag, Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap’s Molly House, The Cut, Product, pool (no water) with Frantic Assembly, A Life in Three Acts with Bette Bourne, Ten Plagues, and The Cane. Mark’s work has been performed at the Royal Court Theatre, the National Theatre, the Barbican Centre, the Donmar Warehouse, the Gate Theatre, Paines Plough, the Edinburgh Festival, the Royal Festival Hall and more, and it has also enjoyed numerous West End transfers. He also created ITV sitcom Vicious with Gary Janetti which stared Sir Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi and was Writer-In-Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company. From 2021 to 2023 he was Artistic Director of the Kings’s Head Theatre, Islington.

Mark will teach on the School’s Writing for Performance course, which has also featured guest teaching from Leo Butler, Guleraana Mir, Tanika Gupta MBE, Jennifer Farmer and Tim Crouch

Dr Amanda Stuart Fisher, Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Central and the Course Leader for Writing for Performance said:

We are delighted that Mark will be working with our students on the BA (Hons) Writing for Performance course. Mark is a very skilled playwright and teacher. It will be fantastic opportunity for our students who will be working with him to create their own plays this term.

Mark Ravenhill said:

I’m looking forward to engaging with the next generation of playwrights. I hope to help  them find dramatic expression for the big questions they want to ask and the stories they want to tell.

To find out more about the Writing for Performance course, please visit the course page on the Central website.