This book gathers together six important works by Michael Springate: Historical Bliss, Dog and Crow, The Consolation of Philosophy, Freeport Texas, Kareena, and Kut: Shock and Awe. Written and produced over a twenty-five year period, they capture an expansive range of interests and influences, and reflect the artistic interdisciplinarity which has been a defining feature of his career. Dr Erin Hurley, in her ground-breaking introduction, writes: Consciously crafted, precise in their diction, and allusive in their references, these plays ask for the readers collaboration Their poetry the considered arrangement of the words, the shape of the text on the page, the accretion of meaning across the play, its solicitation of the readers increased awareness activates the senses without necessarily dictating where they should take me or what I should make of them. At the same time, the ideas unfolded require a different vantage, a theoretical engagement. How can we locate ourselves in history? Where do art and politics intersect? What can words convey? How does social change come about? What part of memory and ideology is imagination? Revolt and compassion are these stances in contradiction with each other, or a contradiction with which to begin?