The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its first public reading in an early version at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 1995. It tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state, who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of bizarre child murders occurring in his town.

The play received the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the 2004-5 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play, and two Tony Awards for production. It was nominated for the 2004 Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.

 

 

Katurian, a writer of short stories that often depict violence against children, has been arrested by two detectives, Ariel and Tupolski, because some of his stories resemble recent child murders. When he hears that his brother Michal has confessed to the murders and implicated Katurian, he resigns himself to being executed but attempts to save his stories from destruction.

 

 

The play contains both narrations and reenactments of several of Katurian's stories, including the autobiographical "The Writer and the Writer's Brother", which tells how Katurian developed his disturbed imagination by hearing the sounds of Michal being tortured by their parents.

 

 

Martin Faranan McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, screenwriter, producer, and director. Born and brought up in London, the son of Irish parents.

 

He is among the most acclaimed living Irish playwrights. A winner of the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, McDonagh has been nominated for three other Academy Awards, and in 2018 won three BAFTA Awards from four nominations and two Golden Globe Awards from three nominations for his film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.