Mark Ravenhill (born 7 June 1966) is an English playwright, actor and journalist.

His plays include Shopping and Fucking (first performed in 1996),[1] Some Explicit Polaroids
(1999) and Mother Clap's Molly House (2001). He made his acting debut in his monologue
Product, at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He often writes for the arts section of The
Guardian. He is Associate Director of London's Little Opera House at The King's Head
Theatre.[2]
Ravenhill is the elder of two sons born to Ted and Angela Ravenhill. He grew up in West
Sussex, England and cultivated an interest in theatre early in life, putting on plays with his
brother when they were eight and seven, respectively. He studied English and Drama at
Bristol University from 19841987, and held down jobs as a freelance director, workshop
leader and drama teacher.[3]
In 1997, Ravenhill became the literary director of a new writing company, Paines Plough. In
2003, when Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director of the National Theatre, Ravenhill
was brought in as part of his advisory team. In the mid-nineties, Ravenhill was diagnosed as
HIV+, his partner of the early 1990s having died from AIDS.[4]
Although he was at the heart of new British playwriting in the 1990s and 2000s, Ravenhill
respects historical theatre. He has said that he would like to see directors focus more on the
classics and stop producing new plays that don't have as much substance or meaning.[5] In the
same article, Ravenhill posits that directors have forced themselves into the "eternal present",
rather than expanding their reach to the many different cultures and genres of the past that
they have to choose from. Ravenhill has a love of traditional pantomime; he presented a
Radio 4 documentary about the form and wrote Dick Whittington for the Barbican Theatre in
2006.
Ravenhill's work has transformed and developed in the 2000s. While his work in the 1990s
Shopping and Fucking, Handbag, and Some Explicit Polaroids for example may be
characterised as trying to represent contemporary British society, his later work has become
more formally experimental and abstract. His one-man show Product, which toured
internationally after its premiere at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is both a satire on the
post-9/11 attitudes to terrorism, and a minutely observed reflection on the limits of language
and form to capture contemporary reality. His play, The Cut, opened in 2006 at the Donmar
Warehouse starring Sir Ian McKellen; it divided critics with its portrait of a world dominated
by the administering of a surgical procedure: the country, the year and the procedure are all
unspecified.
His earlier short plays for young people, Totally Over You and Citizenship, both written for the
National Theatre's National Theatre Connections Programme, continue to be produced.
In November 2007, he announced in the Guardian that for the moment, he would concentrate
on writing about heterosexual characters.[6]

In 2008 the Royal Court, The Gate Theatre, the National Theatre, Out of Joint, and Paines
Plough collectively presented the seventeen short plays Ravenhill wrote for the 2007
Edinburgh Festival Fringe under the title Ravenhill for Breakfast, retitled as Shoot/Get
Treasure/Repeat.[7] They express his ambiguous and politically indirect later style.
In 2009 Mark Ravenhill presented a staged reading of A Life In Three Acts, transcripts of
conversations with Bette Bourne, an actor, drag queen and equal rights activist, at the
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. The following year, he presented readings of this work at St.
Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY and the Soho Theatre in London. Bourne worked with
Ravenhill previously on a short play, Ripper, playing Queen Victoria at the Union Theatre in
London in 2007.
He is also working on a TV series.
Ravenhill is a regular contributor to the annual Terror Season at the Southwark Playhouse in
London, England. His short play The Exclusion Zone premiered in October 2010.
Ravenhill was appointed Associate Director of London's Little Opera House at The King's
Head Theatre in September 2010.[2] He played an active role in the venue's relaunch as
London's third Opera House along with patron Sir Jonathan Miller, Robin Norton-Hale and
Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher.[8]
In 2012, Mark Ravenhill became the Royal Shakespeare Company's Writer in Residence.[9]
The same year, he was commissioned by the London Gay Men's Chorus for a piece to mark
the choir's 21st anniversary. With the music composed by Conor Mitchell, the piece, entitled
Shadow Time, explores the evolution of mentalities in respect of homosexuality in the lifetime
of the Chorus. The piece will be premiered at the Royal Festival Hall, on 6 May 2012 during
the Chorus' summer concert: A Band of Brothers.[10]
ITV1's sit-com Vicious is written by Gary Janetti and Mark Ravenhill and shown from April
2013.
In 2014 Ravenhill wrote a Doctor Who story entitled of Chaos Time The for Big Finish
Productions.