TNT The New Theatre

"This extraordinary memoir of a theatre company is actually many stories. It is the story of the impact of a university lecturer, Edward Braun, on two young men in the 1970s. It is the story of their location in theatrical lineages and genealogies that include Vsevolod Meyerhold and Music Hall, Jerzy Grotowski and Jonathan Pryce. It is the story of one of the few small-scale British touring companies of the 1980s to survive into the 21st century through a combination of happenstance and pragmatic utopianism. It is the story of adaptation and assemblage resulting from open-ended journeys, encounters and the crossing of borders between what was once known as East and West. But perhaps more than anything, it is a love story – and the object of love is theatre itself." Roberta Mock, Professor of Performance Studies, University of Plymouth "I've known TNT since 2003, and I took them to China for the first time in 2005 for performance. The first play was 'Macbeth' and it was very successful. Since then, Paul has been invited to Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center and other theatres in China to direct plays. We had a very happy cooperation with him. TNT is also very famous in China now, they have a large audience in China and are loved by them." Nick Rongjun YU, Artistic Director, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center "A glorious mix of fine, precise detail and broad sweep commentary and reflection on the last four decades. A model of writing which allows for feeling and passion to co-exist alongside and become intertwined with ‘cold’ consideration and incisive scrutiny of how to position TNT within the cosmology of theatre and performance both within Europe and beyond. ... If categories matter this book is impossible to position: part travel writing, part (auto)biography, part political and cultural history, part philosophy, part theatre and performance studies, part poetry and always story-telling." Simon Murray, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Glasgow University