In this thesis my aim is to create the first substantial overview and analysis of the work of the United States-based theatre company the Riot Group. The thesis traces the development of the company's work, chronologically, from its establishment in 1997; the only play not to be ft covered is their most recent work, Hearts of Man, a work-in-progress which has yet to receive its UK premiere. The basis for the critical analysis of the company's theatre is the idea that the aesthetic practices of Shaplin as a playwright and the Riot Group as a company are both inseparable and almost organically adaptive. My thesis, in this sense, is that Shaplin and his co-conspirators are. to borrow a phrase from Claude Levi-Strauss, "bricoleurs" that is that, rather than belonging to any one school or tradition, they draw upon the general culture's existing ''heterogeneous repertoire."