About this episode

Dua Lipa interviews Jez Butterworth about his play Jerusalem, exploring its inspirations and themes.

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. Join the club: 📩 Email us your thoughts – books@service95.com 📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for more author interviews 📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – and be the first to discover Dua’s next pick – at…

People in this episode

Host: Dua Lipa

Guest: Jez Butterworth

Topics covered

• theatre
• playwriting
• creative process
• rural England
• belonging
• character inspiration

Keywords

• Jerusalem
• Jez Butterworth
• Dua Lipa
• theatre
• play
• creative writing
• rural England
• belonging

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Service95

Books & works: Jerusalem

Places: England, woodland clearing

More episodes of Service95 Book Club With Dua Lipa

• So Late In The Day: Dua Lipa & Claire Keegan On Everyday Misogyny · May 5, 2026 · 42 min
• All About ‘Jerusalem’: Jez Butterworth Answers Your Questions · April 21, 2026 · 7 min
• Jez Butterworth Reads The ‘Jerusalem’ Passage He Found Hardest To Write · April 14, 2026 · 6 min
• The Archive Episode: Dua & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie On Half Of A Yellow Sun · March 24, 2026 · 35 min
• You Asked, She Answered: Roxane Gay Addresses All Your Questions · March 17, 2026 · 8 min
• Roxane Gay Reads An Essay From Her Book, Bad Feminist · March 10, 2026 · 10 min

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