Peter Morris (playwright)
Encyclopedia
Peter Morris is an American playwright
, television writer and critic, best known for his work in British theatre.
and Yale University
, graduating in 1997. He then studied at Somerville College, Oxford
on a grant from the British Academy
where he was active with OUDS as a writer and performer.
Morris' plays are noteworthy for their willingness to address difficult political topics, including the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
in Guardians
and the murder of James Bulger
in “The Age of Consent”. He is additionally known for his innovative adaptations of work by previous writers, including Aristophanes
, Gilbert and Sullivan
, and Maurice Maeterlinck
.
Morris has been included as part of the British school of "In-Yer-Face Theatre" by critic Aleks Sierz.
and Katherine Parkinson
, “generated enormous controversy” on its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001, due to its examination of the aftermath of the murder of James Bulger
, and led to calls for a public boycott after the play’s sympathetic stance towards the ten-year-old children convicted of Bulger’s murder was publicly condemned by the mother of James Bulger as “sick and pathetic”, but the play was publicly defended by the director of the Edinburgh Fringe
, who stated that “controversy is always a part of the festival and it would not be the fringe festival if some difficult issues were not being tackled”.
Morris was invited by The Guardian
to speak about the controversy himself on the newspaper’s comment page, where, in a piece entitled “In Defence of My Play”, he claimed that: “…what I sense…is an attack on my desire, if not my right, to handle this topic in a play. And here I must stand up for what theatre does. Theatre remains our best, our most prodigious and elastic forum for moral inquiry. An audience gathers to assert its power of judgment.” Morris was publicly defended by a number of prominent playwrights, including David Edgar
.
The production transferred to London's Bush Theatre
, where New York Times critic Ben Brantley
claimed that Morris was part of a new generation of “angry young men” in British theatre, “as explosive, nihilistic and exasperated as ever”--failing to note that, while the play was set in contemporary England, the writer was, in fact, not English but American. In a later interview with the New Statesman
, Morris claimed "I really don't have any choice but to continue working in London because the kind of stuff I want to write won't be produced in the US."
The Age of Consent was later staged in Dublin, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. The 2008 Australian production generated similar controversy to the premiere, with condemnation from the tabloid newspapers that “the murderers of British toddler Jamie Bulger are being given a sympathetic treatment”
, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005, won the Fringe First Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, and transferred to London later that year. The play received its American premiere with The Culture Project in New York City in 2006, starring Lee Pace
and Katherine Moennig
, directed by Jason Moore
.
The play was praised by Karen J. Greenberg--Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU
School of Law
and the author of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, The Torture Debate in America, and Al Qaeda Now
--in an article where she claims that the play represents a "truly profound" analysis of America's role in, and response to, the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Greenberg's article, entitled "Split Screens", originally appeared in The American Prospect
magazine; it is included in a 2007 book of essays entitled "One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers", edited by Tara McKelvey
with foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich
and afterword by Cynthia Enloe
. Greenberg's essay concludes with this praise for the play:
"Who, really, are the victimizers? ... The answer is complex, but would come to light with some clarity in an independent investigation or Congressional inquiry ... Until this occurs, however, the American public will have to glean what it can from the words of a playwright." (Greenberg, "Split Screens")
by Aristophanes
, was staged at the Arcola
in London in 2006, starring Kika Markham
and Chipo Chung
.
Morris was a founding member of the Obie-winning theatre company The Civilians
, and worked with them on two productions, Gone Missing and Nobody's Lunch.
From 2003 to 2007, Morris taught as writer-in-residence at LAMDA, where he staged A Million Hearts for Mosley, which used the music from The Yeomen of the Guard
by Gilbert and Sullivan
to stage an exploration of the British Union of Fascists
and the careers of Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana Mosley.
Morris' adaptation of La Mort de Tintagiles
by Maurice Maeterlinck
, entitled "The Death of Tintagel", was published in The Paris Review in 2003, and will be staged for the first time in London in autumn 2010, at People Show Studios, produced by Saltpeter Productions and directed by Vik Sivalingam.
, the Guardian
, the Observer
, and the Independent
.
At Yale Morris was a student of Harold Bloom
: later Morris published a lengthy response to Bloom's work The Anxiety of Influence
, entitled “Harold Bloom, Parody, and the Other Tradition”, in The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom, a seventy-fifth birthday festschrift
for Bloom.
Morris' extremely negative response to Bloom's later work is acknowledged by Harold Bloom in his “Afterword” to the volume, where Bloom stated that “I note that one contribution to this volume suggests that I have become a Moldy Fig, a term applied to Dixielanders by the great Bop jazz artists of my youth”. This is a response to Morris' claim that Bloom's work, in The Western Canon and afterward, is "frankly jejune", referring to Bloom as “a latter-day Mortimer J. Adler garbed in the ill-fitting mantle of Ecclesiastes
, author of works like How to Read and Why and Where Shall Wisdom be Found?, in which Bloom does for the great writers what Liberace
did for the great composers.”
, and was invited back for the 1998 Jeopardy! Teen Reunion Tournament. On both occasions he informed Alex Trebek
that his future career plans included the Papacy.
As a television writer, Morris wrote for the fourth and final season of Born and Bred
on the BBC. From 2007 to 2010, he wrote for all three seasons of Katy Brand's Big Ass Show
on ITV, and additionally performed as a member of the show's ensemble cast.
Publications
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Spring03/PMVarieties.htm
“In Defence of My Play”, commentary piece on The Age of Consent
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,533615,00.html
“If You're A Playwright, the US is No Place For Seriousness”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/peter-morris-if-youre-a-playwright-the-us-is-no-place-for-seriousness-662444.html
“Masochism is the Key to Fringe Theatre”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/aug/07/edinburghfestival2005.edinburghfestival1
"A Note from the Author: on The Death of Tintagel"
http://deathoftintagel.com/HOME.html
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, television writer and critic, best known for his work in British theatre.
Biography
Morris was born in Philadelphia and educated at The Haverford SchoolThe Haverford School
The Haverford School is a private, non-sectarian, all-boys college preparatory day school, junior kindergarten through grade twelve. Founded in 1884 as The Haverford College Grammar School, it is located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, nine miles northwest of Philadelphia, on Philadelphia's historic...
and Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, graduating in 1997. He then studied at Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, and was one of the first women's colleges to be founded there...
on a grant from the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
where he was active with OUDS as a writer and performer.
Morris' plays are noteworthy for their willingness to address difficult political topics, including the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...
in Guardians
Guardians (play)
Guardians is an Off-Broadway play written by Peter Morris. It debuted at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the "Fringe First Award" and made its New York debut on April 11, 2006 at The Culture Project.-Synopsis:...
and the murder of James Bulger
Murder of James Bulger
James Patrick Bulger was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables .Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while...
in “The Age of Consent”. He is additionally known for his innovative adaptations of work by previous writers, including Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
, and Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
.
Morris has been included as part of the British school of "In-Yer-Face Theatre" by critic Aleks Sierz.
The Age of Consent
Morris' play The Age of Consent, starring Ben SilverstoneBen Silverstone
Benjamin Maurice Silverstone is an English barrister and former actor. He has one sister and one brother. He studied English at Cambridge University and law at the LSE.-Career:...
and Katherine Parkinson
Katherine Parkinson
Laura Katherine Parkinson is an English actress and comedian who is known for playing the part of Jen Barber in the Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd...
, “generated enormous controversy” on its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001, due to its examination of the aftermath of the murder of James Bulger
Murder of James Bulger
James Patrick Bulger was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables .Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while...
, and led to calls for a public boycott after the play’s sympathetic stance towards the ten-year-old children convicted of Bulger’s murder was publicly condemned by the mother of James Bulger as “sick and pathetic”, but the play was publicly defended by the director of the Edinburgh Fringe
Edinburgh Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place annually in Scotland's capital, in the month of August...
, who stated that “controversy is always a part of the festival and it would not be the fringe festival if some difficult issues were not being tackled”.
Morris was invited by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
to speak about the controversy himself on the newspaper’s comment page, where, in a piece entitled “In Defence of My Play”, he claimed that: “…what I sense…is an attack on my desire, if not my right, to handle this topic in a play. And here I must stand up for what theatre does. Theatre remains our best, our most prodigious and elastic forum for moral inquiry. An audience gathers to assert its power of judgment.” Morris was publicly defended by a number of prominent playwrights, including David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
.
The production transferred to London's Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...
, where New York Times critic Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
claimed that Morris was part of a new generation of “angry young men” in British theatre, “as explosive, nihilistic and exasperated as ever”--failing to note that, while the play was set in contemporary England, the writer was, in fact, not English but American. In a later interview with the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, Morris claimed "I really don't have any choice but to continue working in London because the kind of stuff I want to write won't be produced in the US."
The Age of Consent was later staged in Dublin, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. The 2008 Australian production generated similar controversy to the premiere, with condemnation from the tabloid newspapers that “the murderers of British toddler Jamie Bulger are being given a sympathetic treatment”
Guardians
Morris' play GuardiansGuardians (play)
Guardians is an Off-Broadway play written by Peter Morris. It debuted at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the "Fringe First Award" and made its New York debut on April 11, 2006 at The Culture Project.-Synopsis:...
, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005, won the Fringe First Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, and transferred to London later that year. The play received its American premiere with The Culture Project in New York City in 2006, starring Lee Pace
Lee Pace
Lee Grinner Pace is an American actor. Pace has been featured in film, stage and television. He is known best for his starring role as Ned in the ABC series Pushing Daisies for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2008.-...
and Katherine Moennig
Katherine Moennig
Katherine Sian Moennig is an American actress known for her role as Shane McCutcheon on The L Word, as well as Jake Pratt on Young Americans. In 2009, she starred as Dr. Miranda Foster on CBS Three Rivers.- Personal life :Moennig was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Broadway dancer Mary Zahn...
, directed by Jason Moore
Jason Moore (director)
Jason Moore is an American director of theatre and television. He was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas and later studied at Northwestern University.-Career:...
.
The play was praised by Karen J. Greenberg--Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
School of Law
New York University School of Law
The New York University School of Law is the law school of New York University. Established in 1835, the school offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in law, and is located in Greenwich Village, in the New York City borough of Manhattan....
and the author of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, The Torture Debate in America, and Al Qaeda Now
The Torture Papers (book)
The Torture Papers: The Road To Abu Ghraib is a book about the use of controversial techniques in the interrogation and detention of captives of the US.The book is a collection of documents, edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L...
--in an article where she claims that the play represents a "truly profound" analysis of America's role in, and response to, the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Greenberg's article, entitled "Split Screens", originally appeared in The American Prospect
The American Prospect
The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...
magazine; it is included in a 2007 book of essays entitled "One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers", edited by Tara McKelvey
Tara McKelvey
Tara Shannon McKelvey is an American journalist who is a senior editor at The American Prospect.McKelvey began her journalism career as a clerk at The New York Times, following her 1987 graduation from Georgetown University.McKelvey, a research fellow at New York University School of Law's Center...
with foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich
-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...
and afterword by Cynthia Enloe
Cynthia Enloe
-Biography:Born in 1938, Cynthia Enloe spent her early life on Long Island in a New York suburb. After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960 , she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D...
. Greenberg's essay concludes with this praise for the play:
"Who, really, are the victimizers? ... The answer is complex, but would come to light with some clarity in an independent investigation or Congressional inquiry ... Until this occurs, however, the American public will have to glean what it can from the words of a playwright." (Greenberg, "Split Screens")
Other Plays
His play Gaudeamus, a contemporary adaptation of the AssemblywomenAssemblywomen
Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae is a play dating from 391 BCE which is similar in theme to Lysistrata in that a large portion of the comedy comes from women involving themselves in politics...
by Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, was staged at the Arcola
Arcola
Arcola is an offshoot of the record label Warp Records. It was set up in late 2003, and takes its name from the Arcola Theatre, Arcola Street in Dalston, London where Warp held the launch party for the label....
in London in 2006, starring Kika Markham
Kika Markham
Kika Markham is an English actress.Markham was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire. She is a daughter of actor David Markham and writer Olive Dehn . She has led a long career in the cinema, television, and theatre as an actress...
and Chipo Chung
Chipo Chung
Chipo Chung is a Tanzanian-born actress raised in Zimbabwe. She currently lives in London.-Background:Chipo Chung was born as a refugee in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She is half-Zimbabwean and half-Chinese. She spent her first two years in refugee camps in Mozambique with thousands of young people...
.
Morris was a founding member of the Obie-winning theatre company The Civilians
The Civilians
The Civilians is an investigative theatre company in New York City founded in 2001 by Artistic Director Steve Cosson. The Civilians artists pursue their inquiries using interviews, community residencies, research, and other methods...
, and worked with them on two productions, Gone Missing and Nobody's Lunch.
From 2003 to 2007, Morris taught as writer-in-residence at LAMDA, where he staged A Million Hearts for Mosley, which used the music from The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
by Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
to stage an exploration of the British Union of Fascists
British Union of Fascists
The British Union was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Sir Oswald Mosley as the British Union of Fascists, in 1936 it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and then in 1937 to simply the British Union...
and the careers of Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana Mosley.
Morris' adaptation of La Mort de Tintagiles
La Mort de Tintagiles
The Death of Tintagiles is an 1894 play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. It was Maeterlinck's last play for marionettes.Maeterlinck dedicated the play to Aurélien Lugné-Poe, a theatre director who had supported several of his earlier works....
by Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, entitled "The Death of Tintagel", was published in The Paris Review in 2003, and will be staged for the first time in London in autumn 2010, at People Show Studios, produced by Saltpeter Productions and directed by Vik Sivalingam.
Criticism
Morris has written criticism for various publications in England including AretéAreté
Areté is an arts magazine, published three times a year, edited by the poet Craig Raine. The magazine aims to give detailed coverage of theatre, fiction, and poetry, while also serving as a platform for new writing in all genres....
, the Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, the Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, and the Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
.
At Yale Morris was a student of Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
: later Morris published a lengthy response to Bloom's work The Anxiety of Influence
The Anxiety of Influence
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a book by Harold Bloom, published in 1973. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism....
, entitled “Harold Bloom, Parody, and the Other Tradition”, in The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom, a seventy-fifth birthday festschrift
Festschrift
In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...
for Bloom.
Morris' extremely negative response to Bloom's later work is acknowledged by Harold Bloom in his “Afterword” to the volume, where Bloom stated that “I note that one contribution to this volume suggests that I have become a Moldy Fig, a term applied to Dixielanders by the great Bop jazz artists of my youth”. This is a response to Morris' claim that Bloom's work, in The Western Canon and afterward, is "frankly jejune", referring to Bloom as “a latter-day Mortimer J. Adler garbed in the ill-fitting mantle of Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
, author of works like How to Read and Why and Where Shall Wisdom be Found?, in which Bloom does for the great writers what Liberace
Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
did for the great composers.”
Television
Morris was a contestant on the 1989 Jeopardy! Teen TournamentJeopardy! Teen Tournament
The Jeopardy! Teen Tournament is one of the traditional tournaments held each season on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! Contestants in this tournament are primarily high school students, and between the ages of thirteen and seventeen...
, and was invited back for the 1998 Jeopardy! Teen Reunion Tournament. On both occasions he informed Alex Trebek
Alex Trebek
George Alexander "Alex" Trebek is a Canadian American game show host who has been the host of the game show Jeopardy! since 1984, and prior to that, he hosted game shows such as Pitfall and High Rollers. He has appeared in numerous television series, usually as himself...
that his future career plans included the Papacy.
As a television writer, Morris wrote for the fourth and final season of Born and Bred
Born and Bred
Born and Bred is a light-hearted British drama series that aired on BBC One from 2002 to 2005. Created by Chris Chibnall and Nigel McCrery, Born and Breds cast was led by James Bolam and Michael French, who play a father and son who run a cottage hospital in Ormston, a fictional Lancashire village...
on the BBC. From 2007 to 2010, he wrote for all three seasons of Katy Brand's Big Ass Show
Katy Brand's Big Ass Show
Katy Brand's Big Ass Show is a British comedy programme on ITV2.The show features comedian Katy Brand in skits of real life situations and stereotypes, as well and celebrities such as Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Adele and Kate Winslet.The second series began on 2 September...
on ITV, and additionally performed as a member of the show's ensemble cast.
Work
Plays- The Square Root of Minus One (1998)
- Marge (1999)
- The Varieties of Religious Experience (1999)
- A & R (2000)
- Second Amendment Club (2000)
- The Age of Consent (2001)
- Pro Bono Publico (2002)
- Gone Missing (2003)
- A Million Hearts for Mosley (2004)
- GuardiansGuardians (play)Guardians is an Off-Broadway play written by Peter Morris. It debuted at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the "Fringe First Award" and made its New York debut on April 11, 2006 at The Culture Project.-Synopsis:...
(2005) - Gaudeamus (2006)
- The Salivation Army (2007)
- The Death of Tintagel (2010)
Publications
- The Age of Consent (London: Methuen, 2002)
- “The Death of Tintagel” (Paris Review 168, 2003)
- Guardians (London: Oberon, 2005)
- Gaudeamus (London: Oberon, 2006)
- Guardians: Acting Edition (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2007)
- The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom (Cambridge: Salt Press, 2007)
Writings available online
“The Varieties of Religious Experience” (one-act verse play)http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Spring03/PMVarieties.htm
“In Defence of My Play”, commentary piece on The Age of Consent
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,533615,00.html
“If You're A Playwright, the US is No Place For Seriousness”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/peter-morris-if-youre-a-playwright-the-us-is-no-place-for-seriousness-662444.html
“Masochism is the Key to Fringe Theatre”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/aug/07/edinburghfestival2005.edinburghfestival1
"A Note from the Author: on The Death of Tintagel"
http://deathoftintagel.com/HOME.html
External links
- http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsM/morris-peter.html