Ryan Craig is a British-Jewish playwright. Many of his plays deal with matters of Jewish identity and the relations between Jews and other populations. They commonly portray the modern role of Jews, their relation to history, and the way that their past still affects them today. What We Did To Weinstein (2005), for example, tells the story of a character named Josh, who captures a Palestinian terror suspect. This play shows the friction and connection between the two opposing groups.

Craig has also translated Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s play Our Class (2009) into English, which depicts the story of the mass murder of Jews in the northeastern Polish town of Jedwabne in 1941.

Amongst Craig’s plays are Filthy Business (2017) and Games for Lovers (2019). With an adaptation of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, Craig is returning to the National Theatre. The play will encompass music, dramatic scenes, and a choric narrative structure to tell the story of the Soho Cholera Outbreak of 1854. 

Writing in Coffee Shops was published in 2021 and is described as being written to “explore what practical tools the dramatist can useto writeplays that build bridges between us”. Craig’s latest play Charlotte and Theodore (2023) starred Kris Marshall and ran at the Richmond Theatre for a short stint.

 

Plays

—. The Glass Room. London: Oberon Books, 2006.

—. Happy Savages. London: Oberon Books, 2012.

—. How To Think the Unthinkable: After Sophocles’ Antigone. London: Oberon Books, 2012.

—. “Talk Talk Fight Fight.” The Bomb, London: Oberon Books, 2012, pp. 173–198.

—. The Holy Rosenbergs. London: Oberon Books, 2012.

—. What We Did to Weinstein. London: Oberon Books, 2012.

—. Filthy Business. London: Oberon Books, 2017.

—. Games for Lovers. London: Oberon Books, 2019.

—. Charlotte and Theodore. Bath: Ustinov Studio, 2023.