"[1] Stephen Bottoms,[2] Professor of Contemporary Theatre & Performance at the University of Manchester, has written that Crouch's plays "make up one of the most important bodies of English-language playwriting to have emerged so far in the twenty-first century...

"[3] Holly Williams, writing in The Independent in June 2014, says, "Crouch has built a name for himself as one of British drama's great innovators, with plays that have disturbed and challenged the passive theatrical experience.

They worked on eight devised productions, which were performed in "all sorts of venues - from caves in Gloucestershire, to prisons, schools, and major national theatres like the Bristol Old Vic, West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Bush in London.

Crouch wrote his first play, My Arm, as a reaction to his increasing frustration with contemporary theatre, in particular "its adherence to notions of psychological and figurative realism and its apparent neglect of the audience in its processes.

Crouch invites audience members to lend personal possessions, such as keys, jewelry, mobile phones, and photos, which are then cast as "actors", shown on a live video feed.

Professor Stephen Bottoms describes the effect of this: "The lack of physical resemblance between the presented objects and the things they are made to represent creates a sense of humorous incongruity, but also allows the audience to bring in personal associations of their own.

To date, over 300 actors have appeared as the father in the play, including Mike Myers, Christopher Eccleston, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, James Wilby, Laurie Anderson, Toby Jones, Mark Ravenhill, Geoffrey Rush, Tracy-Ann Oberman, David Morrissey, Saskia Reeves, Hugh Bonneville, Peter Gallagher, Juliet Aubrey, Paterson Joseph, Janet McTeer, Alan Cumming, Alanis Morissette, Samuel West, Samuel Barnett, and Patrick Marber.

Since then, ENGLAND has been performed in galleries across the UK and USA and also visited Oslo, Lisbon, Quebec, Madrid, Dublin, Wiesbaden, Melbourne, Singapore, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Budapest and Tehran.

Writing in the Guardian in 2011, Crouch described the varied responses audiences gave the play, in Britain and in the USA: "This is a play during which audience members have read newspapers and novels, built paper aeroplanes, performed Mexican waves, sung happy birthday to one of their own, recited poetry, slow hand-clapped, physically threatened actors, hummed out loud with their fingers in their ears, muttered obscenities, shouted actors down, and thrown copies of the text at the playwright.

While smith sits at a lectern, reading the script, acknowledging the presence of the audience, Crouch attempts to create a realistic play, with a fourth wall, even bringing his own set on stage.

Joyce McMillan reviewed the play in The Scotsman: "As the friend – in a terrific performance from Crouch – rages and sulks and drinks and becomes increasingly, aggressively nervous of the gang of local kids hanging around outside, it gradually becomes apparent – in this brilliant piece of collaborative writing by two master makers – that the dysfunction is not all on one side.

Beccy Smith recorded one audience reaction in her Total Theatre review: "I don't want to have to work this hard", complains one man behind me during the interval, "I come here to be entertained!

[28] The most enthusiastic review came from the independent critic, Matt Trueman, who wrote, "It's gripping: a full-throttle, partners-in-crime road movie of sorts, splashed with Tarantino-esque swagger and post-Kerouac cool ... Adler and Gibb is enormous ...

Charles McNulty in the LA Times described the play as "a kind of avant-garde-by-numbers production that leaves out what has distinguished Crouch's work in the past — the bold interrogation of the audience's role in the theatrical event".

[30] Crouch's 2019 play, Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation, premiered at that year's Edinburgh International Festival followed by a run at the Royal Court, Teatro de Bairro Alto, Lisbon, and the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts (ACCA), Brighton.

The show begins, actors appear and the audience is invited to read along and contribute, turning pages in tandem, tackling Tim Crouch's lines and taking on roles as and when required.

The loosely sketched story, about the final hour of a South American apocalypse-anticipating cult and its leader Miles, is an initial entry point for Crouch's new metatheatrical merrymaking show.

"[35] In The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan wrote, "There is something brilliant, haunting and tragic about Crouch’s suggestion that what is left of theatre has itself become a site of struggle; between those who still fully believe in shared human experience as we once knew it, and those who suspect that those times may be ending, to be replaced by forms of digital connection that offer both more, and much, much less.

[39] Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel was co-directed by Karl James and Andy Smith, with sound design and music from Pippa Murphy and lighting by Laura Hawkins.

The performers, wearing red, blue and yellow ties, play John Brown, Antonio Clegg, and Nancy Cameron, the children of the three party leaders in the 2010 UK election.

"[48] In her review in The Stage, Sally Hales wrote that "Crouch weaves a rich tapestry of meaning that encompasses revolution, republicanism, democracy, the power of the written word, freedom and personal responsibility in a digital age....Lily Arnold's set is backed by a large swathe of crumpled paper on to which Will Monks' violent video imagery of riots flash up during startling moments accompanied by Owen Crouch's soundscape, bursting from near-silence into pulsating, insistent beats.

"[49] Melinda Haunton, on the View from the Cheap Seat site, wrote, "It's a tribute to how successful this show is as creative inspiration that a sticky press night audience of adults and critics scribbled without stopping.

The cast comprised five adult actors (Pandora Colin, Rob Das, Jacqui Dubois, Neil D'Souza and Amalia Vitale) playing the children, their parents, and a dog.

The children were also embodied by four young actors, with roles shared by Atinuke Akinrinade, Ethan Dattani, Nekisha Eric, Rowan Davies-Moore, Archie MacGregor, Ella Scott, Emilija Trajkovic, and Milan Verma.

[52] Miriam Gillinson, in Time Out, described the play as "a properly grown-up piece of children's theatre that reaches across the generations... Crouch likes to tease his audience... test our senses and generally mess with our heads.

"[54] Maddy Costa, in Exeunt, described Beginners as "complex and nuanced, slippery and sly, frequently hilarious, densely poetic, often bewildering to my children, but pleasingly a challenge to their powers of deduction.

According to the National Theatre listing, "Superglue tells the story of a group of climate activists gathering at a woodland burial ground to say goodbye to a friend who died during a protest.

[60] In 2024, Crouch returned to an idea he had initially sketched out for the company Visible Fictions in Scotland 20 years before: a play delivered to the audience through headphones combining binaural recording and live action.

His is a life of ordinary routine; clip on ties, limp packed lunches, vehicle checks, round-trip coach journeys ferrying church groups to donkey sanctuaries and Japanese tourists to Canterbury Cathedral.

"[74] Crouch's plays have been translated into many other languages, and there have been productions of them in Italy, France, Portugal, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Australia, the US and South Korea.