Robert Holman – författare

Eileen and her grandson Matty, 16, travel to Russia to stay with scientist Pavel and his son Nikolai, 14, on the Oka reserve where they are to take part in an experiment to save the Siberian Crane from extinction. When the two boys, Matty and Nikolai are given the responsibility of travelling into the wilds, the clash of their personalities, education and experience provokes in Matty an appalling destructiveness.Across Oka was premiered at The Other Place (RSC) in 1988.

"Robert Holman's Across Oka is about metamorphosis and manipulation in the lives of passionate, gentle people in north Yorkshire and eastern Russia, the first opent to all experience, the second constrained by the discipline of an enclosing state...The new play is alive with theatrical confrontation and generosity of spirit." (Michael Ratcliffe, Observer)

Rafts and Dreams: "While digging up the roots of a tree in the garden, Neil, Leo and Hetty uncover a vast underground lake which floods away the world. With Leo at the tiller of his sawn-away living room, the trio begin a voyage of the earth''s watery surface. It is a surrealist fantasy at its most thought-provoking, a play whose best bits manage to work like a dream" (Paul Taylor, Independent). Outside the Whale is a fictional account of the writer George Orwell set in the early 30s in which the action moves easily over a period of three years and settings as various as the basement warehouse of the publishers Victor Gollancz, a hen-hut in Essex and the dosshouse in Romford.

Rafts and Dreams: "While digging up the roots of a tree in the garden, Neil, Leo and Hetty uncover a vast underground lake which floods away the world. With Leo at the tiller of his sawn-away living room, the trio begin a voyage of the earth''s watery surface. It is a surrealist fantasy at its most thought-provoking, a play whose best bits manage to work like a dream" (Paul Taylor, Independent). Outside the Whale is a fictional account of the writer George Orwell set in the early 30s in which the action moves easily over a period of three years and settings as various as the basement warehouse of the publishers Victor Gollancz, a hen-hut in Essex and the dosshouse in Romford.

On a farm in the North East of England a family gathers. Five brothers and four generations feature in an epic play about hope, love, fear and the very end of time.

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky is a refreshingly subtle and compassionate vision of the world on the edge of apocalypse. Within a cosmological context, the focus is on a single family, their relations with each other and their unreconciled regrets, soon to become permanent. With an ensemble of strong, engaging characters, there are knotty, realistic family dynamics and a palimpsest of recent family history. The characters and dialogue are naturalistic but the serious themes are elucidated and alleviated with humour and quirky, surreal touches.

The play represents a unique collboration between three of the UK''s pre-eminent stage writers. The ambition of the partnership is matched by the ambition of the play''s sweeping scope. Whilst the three voices collide, they also ring out individually without sacrificing the piece''s coherent wholeness, and the play represents a rare, fascinating study in stage collaboration.