Martin Crimp

Abstract

Martin Crimp became involved in theatre while reading English at Cambridge University in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s he began collaborating with the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, where his first plays were staged. In the early 1990s, Crimp began his association with the Royal Court Theatre, which staged No One Sees the Video (1990) and Getting Attention (1991). After a stay in New York as Writer-in-Residence with New Dramatists, Crimp wrote The Treatment (1993), which won the John Whiting Award and established him as a central figure on the new writing scene. In 1997 he was Writer-in-Residence at the Royal Court, which has since then staged his Attempts on her Life (1997), The Country (2000), Face to the Wall (2002), Advice to Iraqi Women (2003) and the triptych Fewer Emergencies (2005). He has recently completed a new play, The City. Crimp is also a prominent translator of French drama, from Molière and Marivaux to Genet, Ionesco and Koltès. In Cruel and Tender (2004) he adapted Sophocles’s The Women of Trachis, placing it in a contemporary setting. Since the mid-1990s his reputation has become firmly established, and his work has been produced by leading directors both in Britain and in continental Europe. The interview that follows was held in Barcelona on 14 February 2005.