Plays Book

This third collection of Tony Harrison's theatre work contains three plays, all of which were written to be performed in specific places in the world. Poetry or Bust, performed in September 1993, is about the Airedale poet John Nicholson (1790-1843) and was devised for the former wool-combing shed at Salts Mill, Saltaire, not a hundred yards from where Saltaire drowned. The Kaisers of Carnuntum was performed on 2 June 1995 in the Roman amphitheatre of Petronell/Carnuntum in Austria and has the bloody Commodus, a Roman Emperor and son of the philosopher Marcus Aureliues, returning to the former Roman frontier town.