Blok/Eko, an ambitious new play written and directed by Howard Barker, will have its world premiere over a three-day run this coming June at the Exeter Northcott theatre in England. Barker will direct a 100-member cast; the theatre’s Web site describes the play as “a surging, boiling crucible of language and imagery about obsession. It is about pain, poetry and medicine, and most touchingly, the lifelong passion of a queen for her servant.” The text will be published in the near future by Oberon Books; it is rumored that this will be the final production of The Wrestling School. Tickets are available here.

Also of note is the release of Mark Brown’s Howard Barker Interviews 1980-2010: Conversations in Catastrophe from Intellect Books. At Intellect’s Web page for the book, Dominic Cavendish, theatre critic for the Daily Telegraph, writes that Conversations in Catastrophe  is “an immaculately put-together, absolutely necessary book, not just for the Barker aficionado but for anyone wondering what happened to the battle of ideas in British theatre. This volume provides an essential overview of this under-appreciated playwright and his enduring work. It’s like a critical survey, intellectual autobiography and dictionary of Barkerian quotations rolled into one.” Obviously the book has relevance for the question of the battle of “ideas” (such as they are) in the American theatre as well. The volume is now available from amazon.co.uk.