Cultural life: Mark Ravenhill, playwright

Cultural life: Mark Ravenhill, playwright (Rex Features)

Theatre

I'm playwright in residence at the RSC, so I see everything there. Hamlet is the current production. I always really like David Farr's productions; they're intelligent and thorough and alive. I think he engages with Shakespeare as a living playwright.

Film

I saw Lincoln, which was sort of worthy and admirable, but I can't say it drove me wild with excitement. I liked Holy Motors. Somehow it felt like exactly what it was like to live at this moment in time.

Television

I dip in and out of Doctor Who because I'm a big fan of the originals. I find I have quite an up and down relationship with the current Doctor Who: some episodes I really love and some I think, 'No, I don't really buy this'.

Books

There are a few authors whose latest stuff I'll always read. People like Alice Munro, Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis. But I find that I mostly read contemporary philosophy. Stuff by Slavoj Zizek, for example, who writes rambling, almost free-association thoughts about contemporary life.

Visual Arts

I went to see the Rosemarie Trockel exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. There were so many different media and so many different textures and moods that it was hard to believe that it was done by the same artist.

Mark Ravenhill is curating a season of plays for Radio 3 from 28 April to 12 May