Scenes From the Big Picture

An epic, masterful twenty-plus-character play about Belfast and its multitude of urban denizens. The play takes place over the course of a hot summer's day in an imagined area of present-day Belfast. We see a day in the life of over twenty inhabitants of the district as their stories interweave and collide. In a tour de force of dramatic writing, a whole world is evoked in a couple of hours. Owen McCafferty's Scenes from the Big Picture was first performed in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre, London, in April 2003, directed by Peter Gill. It won both the 2004 Meyer-Whitworth Award and the 2004 John Whiting Award. 'Scenes From The Big Picture is a more or less perfect play' Financial Times'Magnificently confirms McCafferty's promise. This stirringly ambitious piece is an epic that attempts to put the whole of life on stage - birth, death, love, sex, work, families, the whole damn thing. McCafferty is a writer of depth and subtlety, as well as palpable humanity, and constantly confounds the audience's expectations. His characterisation is detailed, vivid and unpredictable, his dialogue pungent, and the piece constantly combines raw drama with quirky humour' Daily Telegraph'Bathes us in loneliness and violence, foreboding and post-funeral drunkenness, aggression and marital disarray, not to mention teenage sex play for light comic relief... he infuses painful encounters with an authentic sense of pain and regret' Evening StandardWinner of the John Whiting AwardWinner of the Meyer-Whitworth Award