SOURCE: "Stephen Poliakoff s Drama for the Post-Scientific Age," in Theatre Journal, Vol. 45, No. 2, May, 1993, pp. 197-211.

In the following essay, Martin investigates Stephen Poliakoff's early plays as they dramatize life in the contemporary age of science and technology.

The year 1989 saw the appearance both of a new play by Stephen Poliakoff, Playing with Trains, and of the first volume of his collected plays, Poliakoff Plays: One.¹ An unfortunate side-effect of issuing separate volumes of his collected work is the reinforcement this practice will give to the commonplace notion that Poliakoff s early plays, before Breaking the Silence (1984), are stylistically and theoretically distinct from the later plays. In trying to escape the shadow of his "most promising," strikingly unique Urban Canyon plays of the 1970s, Poliakoff clearly did set out to do some things differently in Breaking the Silence.² Its introduction of East European elements into his stage...