About the Play:

Punk Rock has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes.

Punk Rock is a full-length drama by Simon Stephens. As seven teenagers at an English prep school tangle with the pressures of love, sex, bullying and college entrance exams, the confusion, disconnect and latent savagery simmering beneath the surface is revealed. They are intelligent, articulate and accomplished – the cream of the crop turning sour. Filled with the exhilarations of young romance and the acidic potential for violence, Punk Rock takes us to the brink.

Punk Rock plunges into the dark and swirling tensions that affect the lives of teenagers today. In a private school outside of Manchester, England a group of highly-articulate seventeen-year-olds flirt and posture their way through the day while preparing for their final examinations. As if there weren’t enough pressure already to perform well in their studies, their examination results determine where they'll be able to go to university. At its core, the play looks at how our society, with its increasingly high expectations to be successful and its stigmatization of mistakes, has turned school into the ultimate pressure cooker. With hormones raging and minimal adult supervision, the students must prepare for their future – and survive the savagery of high school. Inspired by playwright Simon Stephens' own experiences as a teacher, Punk Rock is an honest and unnerving chronicle of contemporary adolescence.

Punk Rock premiered in 2009 at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Its New York premiere was in 2014 in an MCC Theater production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre off-Broadway. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 5 male

What people say:

"[A] tender, ferocious and frightening play…Mr. Stephens, one of the most quietly original playwrights working today, has the gift (or curse) of perceiving human unhappiness with almost clinical verisimilitude…[He] grounds his subjects in a calm, almost photorealist sense of the everyday, reminding us that extreme behavior is often only a degree removed from what we think of as normal." — The New York Times

"[A] muscular little play that starts out funny and ferocious then reveals its compassion by degrees en route to a tragic and all-too-plausible denouement. What makes Punk Rock so riveting is Stephens’ skill at peering beyond the rampaging hormones, the dangerous energy and youthful insouciance to illustrate the casual cruelty of adolescence as unease escalates into alienation and horrific violence." — The Hollywood Reporter

About the Author:

Simon Stephens is an Olivier Award-winning English playwright. He has written many plays that have been translated into more than 30 languages and produced all over the world. He is a professor of playwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University, an associate playwright at the Royal Court Theatre, the artistic associate at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, and the Steep Associate Playwright at Steep Theatre in Chicago.