Motton, Gregory 1961-

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MOTTON, Gregory 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born September 17, 1961, in London, England; partner of Lotta Kjellberg; children: two daughters, one son.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Oberon Books Ltd., 521 Caledonian Rd., London N5 9RH, England.

CAREER:

Writer and dramatist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

British Arts Council grant, 1989, 1993; Royal Literary Fund grant, 1991, 1995; Polonski Foundation Award, 1994.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

Chicken (produced in London, England, 1987), published with Ambulance, Penguin (London, England), 1987.

Ambulance (produced in London, England, 1987), published with Chicken, Penguin (London, England), 1987.

Downfall (produced in London, England, 1988), published in Plays Two, Methuen (London, England), 1989.

Looking at You (Revived) Again (produced in Leicester and London, England, 1989), published in Plays Two, Methuen (London, England), 1989.

(Adaptor) August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata, produced in London, England, 1989.

(Adaptor) August Strindberg, The Pelican, produced in London, England, 1989

(Adaptor) Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, produced in Leicester, England, 1990.

(Adaptor) Georg Bucher, Woyzeck (produced in London, England, 1992), Hern (London, England), 1992.

(Translator) August Strindberg, The Father (produced in Glasgow, Scotland, 1993), published in Strindberg, The Plays, Volume 1, Oberon (London, England), 1999.

A Message for Thee Broken Hearted (produced in Liverpool, England, 1993), published in Plays Two, Oberon (London, England), 1997.

The Terrible Voice of Satan (produced in London, England, 1993), published in Plays Two, Oberon (London, England), 1997.

Cat and Mouse (Sheep) (produced in Paris, France, at the Theatre de L'Odon, 1994), published in Plays Three, Oberon (London, England), 1997.

Swanwhite, produced in London, England, at the Gate Theater, 1996.

A Little Satire (produced in London, England at the Gate Theater, 1997), published in Plays Three, Oberon (London, England), 1997.

(Adaptor) August Strindberg, The Comrades, published in Strindberg, The Plays, Volume 1, Oberon (London, England), 1999.

(Translator) August Strindberg, Creditors, published in Strindberg, The Plays, Volume 1, Oberon (London, England), 1999.

(Adaptor) August Strindberg, Miss Julie, published in Strindberg, The Plays, Volume 1, Oberon (London, England), 1999.

(Translator) John Fosse, Nightsongs (produced in London, England, at the Royal Court Theatre, 2002), Oberon (London, England), 2000.

Gengis parmi les pygmees (translation means "Genghis among the Pygmees"), produced in Paris, France, 2004.

Also author of Rain, first produced in 1984; The Life of St Fanny, first produced in 1990; translator of The Friends, The Name by Jon Fosse, Someone Is Going to Come by Jon Fosse, and The Storm. Author of the radio plays The Jug, 1991; Lazy Brién, 1992; Sleeping Beauty, 1995; and In Praise of Progress, 1997.

Many of the author's plays have been translated into French.

SIDELIGHTS:

Although playwright Gregory Motton's early plays, such as Chicken and Ambulance, feature naturalistic settings, much of Motton's subsequent work abandons naturalism for a more surreal, impressionistic approach to storytelling. In Downfall, for example, Motton presents his drama in fifty-six separate and brief scenes. A Contemporary Dramatists contributor called the play "forbiddingly dense and oblique with a [network] … of verbal and circumstantial patterning. Its snatches of biblical and occult narrative and its characters (Tower Man, Spanish Lover, Violent Man) are emblematic rather than socially situated."

Motton has also translated several of August Strindberg's plays. According to the Contemporary Dramatists contributor, the relationship between the two playwrights' works is evident in such plays as Looking at You (Revived) Again. In the play, Motton presents three "representative" characters: Abe; Abe's wife, Mrs. James; and "Peragrin's daughter," the woman with whom Abe is consorting. "Inset narrated stagings of a wedding, the lack of social specificity and the more tightly worked psychodramas of repression, transference and working through make this a studied rejection of naturalism," wrote the essayist in Contemporary Dramatists.

Motton's plays are widely popular in France. In 2004 his satire Gengis parmi les pygmees, which means "Gengis among the Pygmies," was first staged in Paris. The hero character Gengis, who also appears in Motton's earlier play Cat and Mouse (Sheep), is described by Michael Billington in the Manchester Guardian as "a Candide-like innocent who is inducted by his grotesque aunt and uncle into a world of capitalist excess." As "king" of this world, Gengis makes goods that become almost instantly obsolete as a rapidly involving hi-tech society becomes a slave to marketing. Gengis eventually finds himself on the other side of the marketing coin when he is dethroned and ends up in a Philippine sweatshop. Billington thought that at times Motton "uses a broadsword where a rapier is needed" in his satiric take on capitalism, but nonetheless noted that the play has "exuberant comic energy." Billington also commented, "Motton seriously rejects naturalism and instead offers a comic-strip satire on capitalist consumerism in the style of Jarry, Ionesco or Vian. He is like an absurdist with Marxist tendencies."