ABSTRACT
Martin Crimp and Simon Stephens work is played around the world and a consideration of the number of productions in Europe’s most highly subsidised theatre system, Germany, reflects their continued popularity. The German theatre system is the most highly funded in Europe, and it is this aspect that helps understand Crimp and Stephens as ‘European’ playwrights. It is not so much that their plays are ‘non-traditional and uncommon’, but rather that European theatres are able to treat their texts in ways that are appropriate to the formal features. Until the advent of cheap and easy (air) transportation, British playwrights tended to write for British theatres, something that entailed a great deal of limitation. British playwriting was conspicuous, with some notable exceptions, by its reliance on realistic language, clear situations, and plays regulated by detailed stage directions, the legacy of George Bernard Shaw.
