Jerusalem: Jez Butterworth on Real Life Inspirations, Creative Instinct & The Myth of Rural England 

For April, Dua has chosen Service95’s first play: Jerusalem by award-winning British playwright Jez Butterworth. He’s widely regarded as one of the leading voices in contemporary theatre – with this conversation with Dua showing exactly what that reputation is built on. 

Here, Dua and Jez trace the creative forces behind Jerusalem, which unfolds across a single day in a fictional rural English village and centres on the anarchic Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron as he resists eviction from the woodland clearing he calls home.  

The conversation begins with the real figures and encounters that shaped the play’s characters, before turning to Jez’s instinctive approach to writing and the ideas that underpin Jerusalem. Together, they consider the play’s elusive staying power; as Jez puts it, it lingers like “a great song that you can never work out the meaning of”. 

Jerusalem is an exploration of belonging: who is permitted to remain, and who is forced out. 

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