Craig Higginson

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shortly after the millennium. Patricia and Richard Wiley, an elderly white couple, are packing up to leave the farm they’ve sold to developers. Their preparations are interrupted by the arrival of a young man – ‘Look Smart’ – who used to be one of the black workers on their estate until he disappeared fifteen years ago. The day before Look Smart left, something terrible happened on the Wileys’ farm. But everyone has a different memory of the dreadful event and their own role in it. As the different accounts of their shared past are unravelled, they are all forced to confront their own versions of the truth – with shocking ramifications for their lives today. Dream of the Dog is a richly textured and complex story of South Africa’s emerging democracy, and its continued negotiation with its past in order to find a workable identity for its future. Critically acclaimed in South Africa, this new play takes an unflinching look at the twin mantras of the post-Mandela age – reconciliation and forgiveness – as it asks whether black and white can ever live together peacefully.

Dream of the Dog

‘An intriguing and complex family story. I was hooked from the first sentence.’ – Nozizwe Cynthia Jele, author of The Ones with Purpose What is the cost of giving a gift? What is the cost of receiving one? At eleven years old, Julian Flint prefers to remain invisible, safe inside the architecture of adults provided by his mother, his uncle and his aunt. But when his mother, Emma, a celebrated sculptor, takes them all on a family holiday to a hotel by the sea, he meets the captivating and irreverent Clare and everything he thought he knew begins to shift – setting off a chain of events that will determine each of their fates. From the award-winning author of The Dream House and The White Room comes Craig Higginson’s most gripping and nuanced novel to date. Moving from the lush beaches of uMhlanga Rocks to the stark midwinter wastes of Johannesburg and the rich and strange coral reefs of Mauritius, this masterfully plotted novel explores the fault-lines between loyalty and betrayal, innocence and accountability, blindness and perception, entrapment and flight. The Book of Gifts dives into the deepest and most hazardous reaches of human consciousness in order to catch the brightest fish.

A Novel

The Book of Gifts

Ruth Little

Book of theater workshops for young people from London's Young Vic Theater with insights from famous actors and directors who have worked there including Jude Law and Joseph Fiennes.

The Young Vic Theatre Book

Thirty miles outside Johannesburg, a group of school friends decide to spend the night in a network of underground caves. The area is known as the Cradle of Humankind. The oldest pre-human remains have been found there, including a four million year-old ape-man called Little Foot. As the friends go deeper underground, forces are unleashed between them and around them. Part reality, part nightmare, South African playwright Craig Higginson's dark and poetic play takes us on an unforgettable journey into our unconscious ancestral memory.

Little Foot

"[N]ovel set in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. ... [T]his is a story about the state of a nation and a deep meditation on memory, ageing, meaning, family, love and loss."--Back cover.

The Dream House

Meera Syal

Steven Sater

Anders Lustgarten

Nancy Harris

Samir Yazbek

Rory Mullarkey

Hilary Bell

Michael Lesslie

Paven Virk

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2012 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. For the 2012 Festival, the anthology has an international feel and offers a window on the world. It includes from Australia a play based on a nineteenth century court case in which a teenage girl was falsely convicted; from Brazil a drama about young lovers doomed to tragedy; set in Russia, a play exploring differing attitudes to National Service and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; a drama about students' rights to an education and the Cultural Revolution of 1966 in China; and a comedy involving a group of Irish country girls travelling to London to audition for the X-Factor.

Victim Sidekick Boyfriend Me; Journey to X; Little Foot; Prince of Denmark; Socialism is Great; The Grandfathers; Alice by Heart; Generation Next; So You Think You’re a Superhero?; The Ritual

National Theatre Connections 2012: Plays for Young People

A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman - called 'the barren one' behind her back - dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life. At the entrance to the long dirt driveway, a car appears and pauses - pointed towards the house like a silver bullet, ticking with heat. So begins The Dream House, Craig Higginson's riveting and unforgettable novel set in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. Written with dark wit, a stark poetic style and extraordinary tenderness, this is a story about the state of a nation and a deep meditation on memory, ageing, meaning, family, love and loss. This updated 2016 edition contains new content, with Craig Higginson exploring the background to The Dream House, his varied experiences in a farmhouse in KwaZulu-Natal and the subsequent and poignant motivations for this moving novel.

From celebrated South African novelist and playwright Craig Higginson, an international literary tale of loss and love. South African playwright Hannah Meade arrives in London for the opening night of her new play. She has arranged to meet Pierre, the student she was in love with when she taught English in Paris. During their time together, they lied their way towards truths they were too young and inexperienced to endure. Perhaps this time they will have a second chance. As the reader is drawn from contemporary London back to Paris on the eve of the war in Iraq, the mystery of past events is brought to vivid life in a series of dramatic, intriguing and deeply moving encounters. Written in layered, stark prose, The White Room lays bare many of our assumptions about language, identity, memory, loss and love.

Craig Higginson

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