[citation needed] His major plays include Shopping and Fucking (first performed in 1996),[1] Some Explicit Polaroids (1999), Mother Clap's Molly House (2000), The Cut (2006), Shoot Get Treasure Repeat (2007) and The Cane (2018).

In 1999 he was one of the recipients of the V Europe Prize Theatrical Realities awarded to the Royal Court Theatre[2] (with Sarah Kane, Jez Butterworth, Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh).

It is set among a mostly young, queer group of friends and captured a generation using sex, drugs, popular culture and therapy to replace a fundamental lack of history, value and political commitment.

Faust is Dead explored some queer post-modern ideas, with nods to Jean Baudrillard; Some Explicit Polaroids adopted some features of the 'State of the Nation Play', an epic left-wing theatre style associated with the 1970s.

His play The Cut moves into Pinteresque territory, its metaphorical image of a near-future society organised around an unspecified surgical procedure (the 'cut' of the title) was an allegory of liberal authoritarianism.

Shoot Get Treasure Repeat began as a series of short (usually 20-minute) plays performed over successive mornings at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007, under the title Breakfast with Ravenhill (for which he received the Spirit of the Fringe award).

[10] At the end of the 2000s, Ravenhill collaborated with Ramin Gray in directing his own Over There, an experimental play and performance about twins separated by the Berlin Wall for the Royal Court.

[16] In September 2023, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama announced that Ravenhill would be joining their teaching staff as a Visiting Lecturer and co-tutor, focusing his time on the Writing for Performance BA degree.