Roy Kift

Roy Kift (born 30 January 1943 in Bideford, Devon) is an English writer, resident in Germany. He writes plays.

Kift in 2014

After gaining a degree in French and Romance Studies at the University of Aberystwyth in 1965, he completed a three year acting course at the London Drama Centre. His first engagement as a professional actor was at the Sheffield Playhouse. Further engagements included a season at the Newcastle Playhouse before he moved to London to play in Mustapha Matura's "Black Pieces". Although he had started writing plays whilst at university (where he won the Eisteddfod playwriting prize), his first breakthrough was with "Mary Mary" which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London in a production by the Freehold Theatre Company directed by Nancy Meckler. He was subsequently awarded the Thames Television Theatre Prize for his play "Downers". Kift moved to Berlin in 1979 to join his later wife Dagmar who was studying there.

His play "Stronger than Superman" had an acclaimed premiere at the GRIPS Theater in Berlin in 1980, where it ran for 216 performances over three seasons. Since then it has been presented every year for more than forty years in over 20 countries around the world.

Roy Kift was married to the historian Dagmar Kift for over 25 years. In 1987 they moved to the Ruhrgebiet when she was given a job as curator in the Zeche Zollern II/IV industrial museum in Dortmund. Dagmar Kift died in 2020 and a year later Roy Kift moved back to Berlin.

In addition to his theatre work, Kift has also written three travel guides, tv plays, radio plays and published a children's book. He is the English translator of plays by Patrick Süskind and Heiner Kipphardt amongst others.

Works (selection)

Theatre plays

• 1962: And Betty Martin…. (1st Prize University of Wales Eisteddfod)
• 1968: The Continuing Tale of the Supermale. Sheffield Playhouse
• 1970: Mary Mary. Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, later European tour incl. Amsterdam and Zurich. La Mama Theater, New York
• 1971: Genesis. Freehold Theatre, London
• 1974: Downers. Bradford University
• 1976: The Complete Whole Earth Catalogue. Royal Shakespeare Company, Donmar Theatre, London
• 1976: Smile for Jesus and the Cameraman. ICA London
• 1976: Cakewalk. Hampstead Theatre, London
• 1977: Happy and Glorious. (co-author Patrick Barlow), Almost Free Theatre, London
• 1978: Land of Hope and Glory. (co-author Patrick Barlow) Theatre Royal Stratford East
• 1980: Stärker als Superman. World Premiere: GRIPS Theatre, Berlin
• 1981: Stronger than Superman. Unicorn Theatre, London (translated into 21 languages)
• 1984: Joy, Opera libretto. Composer: Susanne Erding. World premiere. Kiel Opera House, Germany
• 1992: Dreams of Beating Time. Holocaust play on Wilhelm Furtwängler and his former colleagues in the Theresienstadt concentration camp
• 1999: Camp Comedy. (Holocaust play about Kurt Gerron and the cabaret in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Translations: German, Polish, French. World amateur premiere, CUNY GENESEO 2003, directed by Randy Kaplan. World professional premiere, Legnica, Poland, September 2012) The production was invited to the prestigious Warsaw Theatre Meeting in April 2013 and was later awarded the Grand Prix at the XXIV "Bez Granic" International Theatre Festival in Cieszyn (Poland/Czech Republic).
• 2005: Cathedral of Heresies. S. Fischer Verlag (On problems in the Roman Catholic Church)
• 2010: Nothing. Stage adaptation of Janne Teller’s novel for young people. (Strident Press, GB)
• 2011: The True Story of Adam and Eve as personally dictated by God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth to his prophet Moses between 2.41 pm on the 28th May and 9.27 am on 3 June 1423 BC and later published in a condensed version in the Book of Genesis for the salvation of humanity. (A three-person comedy debunking the GENESIS myth as a man-made fiction to justify an authoritarian, male-dominated world. German and English versions.)
• 2011: The Day God went on Facebook, a satirical comedy in 2 Acts.(also available in German and Polish)
• 2013: One, Two, Free, a play for two persons about the performance of Verdi's Requiem in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1944. World amateur premiere, SUNY GENESEO, directed by Joshua Shabshish and performed by Jordan Griffen and Emily Bantelman.
• 2015: Eden's Garden, a play about Britain's refusal to help the Jews in Poland during the Second World War
• 2024: The Burning House, a dystopian drama about a man on the run from the deluded values of a totalitarian society. Cast: 4-8.

Children’s books

• Franz, Anna und die Zechengeister. Klartext Verlag, Essen 1997, ISBN 978-3-88474-608-0

Travel guides

• Tour the Ruhr. 4th edition, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88474-815-2
• The Wupper Valley. Wuppertal, Solingen, Remscheid and the Bergisch Land. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89861-520-4
• Düsseldorf, Aachen and the Lower Rhine. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-892-2
• The Complete Ruhrgebiet Klartext Verlag, Essen,2018. ISBN 978-3-8375-1876-4

Articles and lectures on theatre

• "Getting to Grips with children’s theatre". In: Theatre Quarterly, Vol X, no 39. 1981
• Hoping for the Unexpected: The Theatre of Peter Zadek. In: New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 1, 1985
• Illusion and Reality in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. In: New Theatre Quarterly, Vol 12, 1996
• Reality and Illusion in the Theresienstadt Cabaret. In: Claude Schumacher (ed.): Staging the Holocaust. The Shoah in drama and performance .Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1998, ISBN 978-0-521-62415-2, pp. 147–168
• Singing in the Face of Death. A Study of Jewish Cabaret and Opera during the Holocaust. In: Rebecca Rovit/Alvin Goldberg (eds.): Theatrical Performance in the Holocaust. Texts, Documents, Memoirs. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore et al. 1999, ISBN 0-8018-6167-5, pp. 125–132