Principia Scriptoriae

In PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE, two young writers meet in prison under an unnamed right-wing Latin American regime. Fifteen years later they find themselves on opposite sides of a conference table.

"… PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE, a powerful and intelligent new play by the American Richard Nelson, which explores the brutal and bloodied relationships between politics and art, and between literature and life in a Latin American country fifteen years ago and today …" —Michael Ratcliffe, The Sunday Observer

"Modern American plays rarely confront public issues head-on: Indeed, after a year in New York, a colleague came home muttering darkly about the prevalence of what he termed 'diaper-drama.' But Richard Nelson's rich and stimulating PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE — now at The Pit (The Royal Shakespeare Company) after playing at the Manhattan Theater Club this April — is a genuine play of ideas. It deals with the fate of the writer under left- and right-wing regimes, with the complex motivation behind creation, and indeed with the abiding consolation of literature itself …" —Michael Billington, The Guardian