Buffini, Moira
Entry updated 26 August 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1965- ) UK dramatist, screenwriter, actor, director and author, active from the late 1980s, best known for her plays, in several of which rambunctious anachronisms may represent an insertion of a perhaps somewhat stagey Fantastika into nonfantastic works. An early example is Silence (performed 1999; 1999 chap), in which complications attending the end of the first millennium CE are intensified by second-millennium shout-outs. Marianne Dreams (first performed 2007; 2007) dramatizes the novel Marianne Dreams (1958) by Catherine Storr. A Vampire Story (first performed 2008; 2016 chap), in which a young woman strives to convince others she is in fact a Vampire, was filmed as Byzantium (2013) directed by Neil Jordan. Greenland (performed 2011; 2011) with Matt Chapman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne jostles together various Near-Future fates Homo sapiens is likely to face. wonder.land (performed 2015; 2015), taking venue and some plot elements from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), exposes its protagonist to an online Virtual Reality world which offers her, perhaps speciously, a new life.
Buffini is also of sf interest for the Young Adult Torch Light sequence beginning with Songlight (2024), set in a distant Near-Future Dystopian world where a threatened Pariah Elite, which has the power of Telepathy, represents a threat to the repressive regime then in power. [JC]
Moira Buffini
born Cheshire: 29 May 1965
works
series
The Torch Light
- Songlight (London: Faber and Faber, 2024) [The Torch Light: pb/]
plays (selected)
- Gabriel (London: Faber and Faber, 1997) [play: first performed 1997 Soho Theatre: pb/]
- Silence (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) [play: chap: first performed October, 1999 Birmingham Repertory Theatre: pb/nonpictorial]
- Loveplay (London: Faber and Faber, 2001) [play: first performed February 2001 Barbican Centre: pb/]
- Dinner (London: Faber and Faber, 2002) [play: first performed 2002 National Theatre's Loft: pb/]
- Dying For It (London: Faber and Faber, 2007) [play: first performed 2007 Almeida Theatre: pb/]
- Marianne Dreams (London: Faber and Faber, 2007) [play: chap: first performed December 2007 Almeida Theatre, London: pb/]
- A Vampire Story (London: Samuel French, 2016 chap) [play: chap: first performed 2008: pb/]
- Welcome to Thebes (London: Faber and Faber, 2010) [play: first performed June 2010 National Theatre: pb/]
- Greenland (London: Faber and Faber, 2011) with Matt Chapman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne [play: first performed February 2011 National Theatre: pb/]
- Handbagged (London: Faber and Faber, 2013) [play: chap: first performed September 2013 Tricycle Theatre, London: pb/]
- wonder.land (London: Faber and Faber, 2015) [play: a musical: first performed July 2015 Manchester International Festival, Manchester: pb/]
links
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