Breath, Boom
By (Author) Kia Corthron
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Methuen Drama
1st August 2006
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
812
Paperback
80
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 5mm
110g
A new American play to re-open the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs Breath, Boom is Kia Corthron's first play for the Royal Court Theatre. It is a startling acute portrayal of Prix, a hardened female gang member in New York, whose only escape from her narrow, abusive life is an obsession with creating the perfect fireworks display. The play is based heavily on research into the lives of young women who choose to lead violent lives on the streets. It captures the tough and often poetic language that people who inhabit a world cut off from normal existence use to both mask and portray a perilous existence.
Kia Cothron is an American playwright, activist, and television writer who has written a number of plays for theatre including Splash Hatch on the E Going Down (Center Stage, Yale Repository Theatre, New York Stage and Film, USA, Donmar Warehouse); Digging Eleven (Hartford Stage Company, USA); Seeking the Genesis (Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Manhattan Theater Club, New York); Life by Asphyxiation (Playwright's Horizons, USA); Wake Up Lou Rise (Delaware Theatre Company); Come Down Burning (Long Wharf Theatre, American Place Theatre, USA). She has won many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts residency with Manhattan Theatre Club, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays for Seeking the Genesis, Young Playwrights Inc's Joe A. Callaway Playwriting award for Come Down Burning, Delaware Theatre Company's First Connections Contest for Wake Up Lou Riser, New Professional Theater Playwriting Award for Cage Rhythm, a Van Lier Fellowship and a New Dramatists membership.