On a farm in the North East of England a family gathers. Five brothers and four generations feature in an epic play about hope, love, fear and the very end of time.
A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky is a refreshingly subtle and compassionate vision of the world on the edge of apocalypse. Within a cosmological context, the focus is on a single family, their relations with each other and their unreconciled regrets, soon to become permanent. With an ensemble of strong, engaging characters, there are knotty, realistic family dynamics and a palimpsest of recent family history. The characters and dialogue are naturalistic but the serious themes are elucidated and alleviated with humour and quirky, surreal touches.
The play represents a unique collboration between three of the UK's pre-eminent stage writers. The ambition of the partnership is matched by the ambition of the play's sweeping scope. Whilst the three voices collide, they also ring out individually without sacrificing the piece's coherent wholeness, and the play represents a rare, fascinating study in stage collaboration.
David Eldridge's theatre credits include: Market Boy (Olivier Theatre, National Theatre); Holy Warriors (Shakespeare's Globe); Miss Julie, The Lady from the Sea (Royal Exchange, Manchester); In Basildon, Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, Under the Blue Sky (Royal Court & West End); Something, Someone, Somewhere (Sixty-Six Books/Bush Theatre); MAD, Serving it Up (Bush); The Knot of the Heart (Almeida), Festen (Almeida, Lyric West End & Broadway); The Stock Da'wa, Falling (Hampstead); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky (with Robert Holman & Simon Stephens, Lyric Hammersmith); Babylone (Belgrade Coventry); John Gabriel Borkman, The Wild Duck, Summer Begins (Donmar Warehouse); A Week With Tony, Fighting for Breath (Finborough); Thanks Mum (Red Room); Dirty (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Cabbage for, Tea, Tea, Tea! (Platform 4 Exeter).
Television credits include: Killers, Our Hidden Lives, The Scandalous Lady W (BBC).
Radio credits include: Michael and Me: Stratford, Ilford, Romford and all Stations to Shenfield; Festen; The Picture Man; Like Minded People; The Secret Grief; John Gabriel Borkman; Jenny Lomas (BBC).
Under the Blue Sky won the Time Out Live Award 2001 for Best New Play in the West End and Festen the 2005 Theatregoers Choice Award for Best New Play. The Picture Man won the Prix Europa Best European Radio Drama 2008. Under the Blue Sky won the 2009 Theatregoers Choice Award for Best New Play. The Knot of the Heart won the 2012 Off West End Theatre Award for Best New Play.
In 2007 the University of Exeter conferred on David an Honorary Doctorate of Letters recognising his achievement as a playwright. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Robert Holman was born in 1952. He was awarded an Arts Council Writers' Bursary in 1974, and since then has spent periods as resident dramatist with the National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon- Avon. His plays include
The Natural Cause (Cockpit Theatre, 1974);
Mud (Royal Court Theatre, 1974);
Outside the Whale (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1976);
German Skerries (Bush Theatre, 1977, for which he won the George Devine Award);
Other Worlds (Royal Court Theatre, 1983);
Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984);
The Overgrown Path (Royal Court Theatre, 1985);
Making Noise Quietly (Bush Theatre, 1986);
Across Oka (Royal Shakespeare, 1988);
Rafts and Dreams (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1990); Bad Weather (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1998);
Holes in the Skin (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2003); and
Jonah and Otto (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2008). He has also written a novel,
The Amish Landscape (1992). In 2010 he collaborated with David Eldridge and Simon Stephens on
A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, which premiered at the Lyric, Hammersmith.
For more than twenty-five years Simon Stephens' work has been widely translated and produced throughout the world. He has won many Awards including Olivier and Tony Awards for new plays. His 2026 play An Ark staged by Tim Drum Collective at the Shed in New York was one of the first plays ever written for Mixed Reality . His radical adaptation of Uncle Vanya, Vanya, starring Andrew Scott ran in London's West End and at the Lucille Lortel , New York between Autumn 23 and Spring 25 and was screened to phenomenal success on NT Live and NT Home. His adaptation of Jose Saramago's Blindness was made into a light and sound installation that was produced internationally during the Covid 19 pandemic. His most famous play is his adaptation of Mark Haddon's best-selling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He has had thirty five original plays produced professionally.
He has written new English language versions of masterpieces by Chekhov, Ibsen and Brecht, collaborated with the world's leading theatre practitioners (Patrice Chereau, Ivo Van Hove, Marianne Elliott, Katie Mitchell) and produced original work throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas.
He has been Artistic Associate at the Lyric, Hammersmith and Associate Playwright at the Royal Court Theatre. He has taught playwriting workshops in five continents. He has presented four series of the celebrated Playwright's Podcast from the Royal Court Theatre. He is a Professor at the Writing School of Manchester Metropolitan University. His book A Working Diary was published by Methuen Bloomsbury in 2016. He lives in East London with his wife, three children, their snake, two cats and two dogs.
