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Silent Planet is a love story about our love of stories, a passionate and poetic fable about the power of literature in a world in which the wrong words can get you killed.
At the height of the Cold War, dissident writer Gavriil is detained in a Soviet mental prison as a punishment for protesting against the government. His only escape is the prison library, a treasure store of banned literature available to the patients, but off-limits to the prison staff. His interrogator, Yurchak, offers to protect him from torture in exchange for sharing the forbidden stories. Their agreement allows them both a kind of freedom - at the risk of their lives.
About the author
Eve Leigh is an award-winning, internationally recognised writer working between theatre, screen, games, installation, and digital art. Works include Midnight Movie, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre and was selected for the Berlin Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2020; Wildfire Road, which premiered at Sheffield Theatres in 2023; Salty Irina shortlisted for the Bruntwood Prize in 2019 from 2,561 anonymous submissions; and The Trick, which debuted at the Bush Theatre, followed by a national tour produced by HighTide Theatre. She leads the first-ever Royal Court/Deafinitely Theatre writers' group for Deaf writers. She was joint Jerwood/Royal Court New Playwright 2019, and the first-ever Artist in Residence for the Experimental Stage of the National Theatre of Greece in 2017.
Summary
Silent Planet is a love story about our love of stories, a passionate and poetic fable about the power of literature in a world in which the wrong words can get you killed.
At the height of the Cold War, dissident writer Gavriil is detained in a Soviet mental prison as a punishment for protesting against the government. His only escape is the prison library, a treasure store of banned literature available to the patients, but off-limits to the prison staff. His interrogator, Yurchak, offers to protect him from torture in exchange for sharing the forbidden stories. Their agreement allows them both a kind of freedom - at the risk of their lives.
