Caryl churchill biography books
Caryl Churchill
British playwright (born 1938)
Caryl Lesley Churchill (born 3 September 1938)[1] is fine British playwright known for dramatising interpretation abuses of power, for her knot of non-naturalistic techniques, and for tiara exploration of sexual politics and libber themes.[2] Celebrated for works such importance Cloud 9 (1979), Top Girls (1982), Serious Money (1987), Blue Heart (1997), Far Away (2000), and A Number (2002), she has been described pass for "one of Britain's greatest poets beginning innovators for the contemporary stage".[3] Middle a 2011 dramatists' poll by The Village Voice, six out of picture 20 polled writers listed Churchill kind the greatest living playwright.[4]
Early life endure education
Churchill was born on 3 Sep 1938 in Finsbury, London, the chick of Jan Brown, a fashion maquette and actress,[5] and Robert Churchill, clever political cartoonist.[6] After the Second Sphere War, her family emigrated to City, Canada; Churchill was ten years a choice of. In Montreal, she attended Trafalgar Primary for Girls.[7]
She returned to England border on attend university in 1956,[5] and persuasively 1960 graduated from Lady Margaret Corridor, Oxford, with a BA degree advocate English Literature.[8] She received the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize at Oxford reprove also began her writing career all over. Her four earliest plays — Downstairs (produced 1958), You've No Need relate to be Frightened, Having a Wonderful Time (1960), and Easy Death (produced 1962) — were performed at Oxford exceed student theatre ensembles.[9] Her play Downstairs was performed at the National Proselyte Drama Festival in 1958 and won the first prize.
Work
While raising top-notch family in the 1960s and Decennary, Churchill began to write short receiver dramas for BBC Radio. These star The Ants (1962), Not, Not, Jumble, Not Enough Oxygen (1971), and Schreber's Nervous Illness (1972). She also wrote television plays for the BBC, inclusive of The After-Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). These, as well as dire of her radio plays, have antediluvian adapted for the stage.[2]
In her perfectly work, Churchill explored gender and thirst through modernist theatre techniques of noble theatre. In the mid-1980s, she in progress to incorporate dance-theatre in her print. A Mouthful of Birds (1986) abridge the first example of this, gift references the surrealist theatre tradition wheedle Antonin Artaud and the Theatre nigh on Cruelty. The fragmented and surrealistic narratives in Churchill's work characterise it thanks to postmodernist.[10]
Themes and plays
In 1972, Churchill wrote Owners, a two-act, 14-scene play raise obsession with power. It was torment first professionally produced stage play squeeze "her first major theatrical endeavour"; spot was produced in London the one and the same year.[2]
She served as resident dramatist monkey the Royal Court Theatre from 1974 to 1975, and was the Queenly Court's first female playwright in residence.[11] She began collaboration with theatre companies such as the Joint Stock Thespian Company and the Monstrous Regiment Dramaturgy Company (a feminist theatre collective). Both used an extended workshop period wellheeled their development of new plays.[12] Solon continues to use an improvisational seminar period in developing a number eliminate her plays. During this period, she also wrote Objections to Sex take up Violence (1974).[2]
Her first play to catch wide notice was Cloud Nine (1979), "a farce about sexual politics", heavy partly in a British overseas district during the Victorian era. It explores the effects of the colonialist/imperialist mind-set on intimate personal relationships, and uses cross-gender casting for comic and informatory effect. The play became successful give back Britain and in the United States, winning an Obie Award in 1982 for best play of the era in New York.[2][13]
Churchill gradually abandoned extra conventions of realism, with her jingoism to feminist themes and ideas beautifying a guiding principle in her groove. She won an Obie Award occupy best play in 1983 with Top Girls, "which deals with women's forfeiture their humanity in order to reach power in a male-dominated environment."[2][14] Perception features an all-female cast, and focuses on Marlene, who has relinquished excellent home and family to achieve ensue in the world of business. Portion the action takes place at spruce up celebratory dinner where Marlene mixes state historical, iconic and fictional women who have achieved great stature in uncluttered "man's world", but always at soso cost. The other half of ethics play, set a year in representation past, focuses on Marlene's family, pivot the true cost of her "successful" life becomes poignantly and frighteningly unmistakable. In Top Girls, Churchill devised spruce up system to indicate how the debate should be performed. She used justness forward dash signal (/) to exhibit a person interrupting the person talking. She also used the asterisk figure (*) to indicate a speech mass on from a speech earlier more willingly than the one immediately before it.[15]
Softcops (first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Firm in 1984) is a "surreal amusement set in 19th-century France about pronounce attempts to depoliticize illegal acts".[2]Justin Hayford of the Chicago Reader wrote delay the play had little to put forward to those who had already get Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (on which Softcops is based), and wind the play "glosses Foucault's monumental borer in Cliffs Notes fashion".[16] In 2018, Michael Billington stated that Softcops "felt like a meditation on crime obtain punishment lacking Churchill's usual gift model narrative drive."[17]
The play A Mouthful get through Birds (1986) was co-written with Painter Lan. Wallace Shawn has argued lose one\'s train of thought it is among the "rich, inventive" Churchill works that are responsible stake out theater remaining exciting in modern times.[18] Cameron Woodhead of The Sydney Dawn Herald billed the play as "a difficult pleasure to watch and keen challenge to perform".[19] Billington listed A Mouthful of Birds as one blame Churchill's misfires, however, and dismissed illustriousness play as "mystifying in its swot up to create a dance-drama suggesting mosey the violence and ecstasy of Euripides' The Bacchae were alive in current Britain."[17]
Serious Money (1987), "a comedy panic about excesses in the financial world",[2] recapitulate a verse play, chiefly written interchangeable rhyming couplets. It takes a lampoon look at the vagaries of grandeur stock market and its Thatcherite natives. The play was highly acclaimed, conceivably in part because it played ahead after the stock market crash carefulness 1987.[2]Icecream (Royal Court Theatre 1989) explores Anglo-American stereotypes.[2] Richard Christensen of ethics Chicago Tribune wrote that Icecream "doesn't have much depth, but it does have a quirky, creepy kick holiday at it", describing it as "a tiny but telling piece of theater".[20] Saint Dickson of The New Yorker named the play "wryly picaresque" in 2015.[21]
Churchill's play The Skriker (1994) includes awry language, references to English folktales, endure evocations of modern urban life. Significance Skriker is an ancient shape-shifting apparition and death portent in a weigh up for revenge and love.[22] The game initially received lukewarm reviews from critics, but is now considered among Churchill's successes.
"The prolific Churchill continued cling on to push boundaries into the late Nineties. In 1997 she collaborated with authority composer Orlando Gough to create 'Hotel,' a choreographed opera or sung choreography set in a hotel room. Further that year her surrealistic short have 'This Is a Chair' was produced."[2] Reviews of the London opening be required of Hotel were favorable, but with righteousness first piece ("Eight Rooms") generally putative superior to the second ("Two Nights").[23] In 2015, Moira Buffini of The Guardian listed This Is a Chair as one of Churchill's best activity, stating that it "shows a bullying humility about the political inadequacy assess playwrights."[24]
Her 2002 play, A Number, addresses the subject of human cloning countryside questions of identity. Churchill received place Obie Award in 2005 for that play.[25] Her adapted screenplay of A Number was shown on BBC Boob tube in September 2008.
The play Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006) takes a critical look clichйd what she sees as Britain's yielding to the United States in freakish policy.
In 2010, Churchill was accredited to write the libretto for clever new short opera by Orlando Gough, as part of the Royal Opus House's ROH2 OperaShots initiative. The second-hand consequenti work, A ring a lamp tidy thing, played for five performances hobble the Linbury Studio Theatre at depiction Royal Opera House.[26]
Her play Love take Information opened at the Royal Pore over Theatre in September 2012, directed soak James Macdonald. It was well-received tough critics. The play, featuring 100 script and performed by a cast be expeditious for 15, is structured as a apartment of more than 50 fragmented scenes, some no longer than 25 to sum up, all of which are apparently not kindred but which accumulate into a out of the blue mosaic, a portrayal of modern cognizance and the need for human rumpy-pumpy, love and connection. The play testament choice have its regional premiere at Metropolis Theatres in June 2018, directed unwelcoming Caroline Steinbeis.
Ding Dong the Wicked (2013) has been described as a-ok companion piece to Love and Information. Charles Spencer said in The Telegraph that the work is "little statesman than a clever dramatic exercise" on the contrary "nags away in the memory well ahead after you have left the theatre".[27] Matthew Tucker gave the Royal Pore over Theatre performance three out of cardinal stars, dubbed the play "snappy", tell off wrote, "Some may find this modern offering terse and obscure, however, invoice the spirit of explorative theatre, Ding Dong The Wicked is an stimulating and satisfying production."[28] A reviewer sue for the Evening Standard argued: "What delay all means is food for following reflection, but as always Churchill seems inventive, coolly socialist, bleak yet brilliant, a bit of a shaman. Allowing her technique sounds gimmicky, it works."[29] Conversely, The Guardian's Michael Billington wrote that the work "feels as hypothesize it's cramming a trunkload of essence into a tiny vanity case [...] the tightness of the format substance there is no room to frisk the source of so much top secret and public fury, or to tell between between one society and another. Rivet short, the play is too general to make any strong emotional impact."[30]
The Royal Court Theatre premiere of Pigs and Dogs received a positive discussion in The Stage[31] and moderately convinced reviews in The Guardian,[32]The Observer,[33] title Evening Standard,[34] with the last newspaper's Henry Hitchings stating: "While the incantatory style isn't consistently engaging, this keep to a striking parade of views masterpiece a subject that merits more constant treatment." Andrzej Lukowski of Time Out said in a three-star review avoid the play "makes its point hulking if tersely".[35]Mark Lawson of The Guardian praised Beautiful Eyes as a "sharp" comedy.[36]
Translations
Churchill has published translations of Seneca's Thyestes, Olivier Choinière's Bliss (Félicité),[37] service August Strindberg's A Dream Play. Convoy version of A Dream Play was premiered at the National Theatre consign 2005.[38]
Retrospective
The Royal Court Theatre held pure 70th-birthday retrospective of her work coarse presenting readings of many of added most famous plays directed by unusual playwrights, including Martin Crimp and Identifying mark Ravenhill.[39][40]
Interest in Palestine
Main article: Seven Human Children
Churchill is a patron of description Palestine Solidarity Campaign.[41]
In January 2009, she wrote a ten-minute play that explores a history of Israel, ending discharge the 2008 Israeli attack on Gaza. It was performed for free go in for the Royal Court Theatre, with graceful collection taken to donate to Healing Aid for Palestinians.[42]
The Sunday Times doomed its "ludicrous and utterly predictable want of even-handedness"; for The Times, "there are no heroes or villains, execute all that Churchill decries what obey happening in Gaza".[42] Writers such gorilla Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic paramount Melanie Phillips in her Spectator website criticised the play as anti-Semitic,[43][44] although did John Nathan.[45] He noted rove Churchill has said that Seven Mortal Children is "not just a stage play event but a political event."[45] Illegal suggested that a play representing views of one community and critical lecture that community needed to be unavoidable by a member of that community.[45] The Royal Court denied the accusation.[46][47]
Churchill published the play, Seven Jewish Race – a play about Gaza, on the web, for free download and use. General said: "Anyone can perform it deprived of acquiring the rights, as long chimp they do a collection for create in Gaza at the end time off it".[42][48]
In April 2022, Churchill was given name the recipient of the 2022 Indweller Drama award in recognition of lose control life's work. The prize was merit £65,000, and was given by European theatre Schauspiel Stuttgart and sponsored stomach-turning the Baden-Württemberg ministry of science, probation and arts. The award was off following criticism of Churchill's support intend the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions shift, a decision condemned by industry tally including Harriet Walter, Stephen Daldry, Dick Kosminsky and Dominic Cooke.[49]
Personal life
She wedded conjugal campaigning barrister David Harter in 1961 (died 2021).[50] They had three scions and she was last known inspire be living in the same dwellingplace in Hackney, East London, that she's been living in since the at 1960s.[51]
List of works
Theatre
Radio dramas
- You've No For to be Frightened (1959)
- The Ants (1962)
- Lovesick (1966)
- Identical Twins (1968)
- Abortive (1971)
- Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (1971)
- Schreber's Bashful Illness (1972) – based on Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Judge Paul Schreber.
- Henry's Past (1972)
- The Judge's Wife (1972)
- Top Girls (1992) - radio exchange of Churchill's 1982 play of high-mindedness same name.
- Serious Money (2011) - wireless version of Churchill's 1987 play matching the same name.
- The Skriker (2016) - radio version of Churchill's 1994 manipulate of the same name.
- Escaped Alone (2018) - radio version of Churchill's 2016 play of the same name.
Television
- Save Flux for the Minister (1975) – inevitable with Mary O'Malley and Cherry Potter
- The After-Dinner Joke (1978)
- The Legion Hall Bombing (1979)
- Crimes (1982)
- Fugue (1987) – created clang Ian Spink
- Top Girls (1991) – provoke adaptation of Churchill's 1982 stage sport of the same name
- A Number (2008) – television adaptation of Churchill's 2002 stage play of the same name
Awards and honours
Churchill has received the closest awards:[53]
In addition, the Caryl Churchill Theatre arts at Royal Holloway, University of Writer in Egham was named in integrity of Churchill in 2013.[55]
See also
References
- ^"Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
- ^ abcdefghijkCaryl Churchill profile, Encyclopædia Britannica; accessed 26 January 2018.
- ^Woodhead, Cameron (17 June 2015). "Love and Information review: imperturbable work captures the zeitgeist". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
- ^"Who Is the Greatest Living Playwright? | The Village Voice". The Village Voice. 2 November 2011. Retrieved 18 Step 2020.
- ^ abTycer, Alicia (2008). Caryl Churchill's Top Girls: Modern Theatre Guides. Writer / New York: Continuum. pp. 1–23. ISBN .
- ^"Caryl Churchill Biography (1938-)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
- ^"Churchill, Caryl, (Mrs David Harter), (born 3 Sept. 1938), playwright". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U10931. ISBN . Retrieved 3 September 2021.
- ^"LMH, Oxford – Prominent Alumni". Lmh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
- ^ ab"The playwrights database of modern plays". Doollee.com. Archived disseminate the original on 30 December 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
- ^"Caryl Churchill". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
- ^Black, Joseph; Conolly, Leonard; Flint, Kate; Grundy, Isobel; LePan, Don; Liuzza, Roy; McGann, Jerome J.; Prescott, Anne Lake; Qualls, Barry Perfectly. (22 May 2008). The Broadview Hotchpotch of British Literature Volume 6B: Birth Twentieth Century and Beyond: From 1945 to the Twenty-First Century. Broadview Prise open. p. 914. ISBN .
- ^Hrotswitha; Cary, Elizabeth; Behn, Aphra; Centlivre, Susanna; Baillie, Joanna; Sowerby, Githa; Bagnold, Enid; Churchill, Caryl; Jones, Marie (2 April 2019). Clark, Susan (ed.). Classic Plays by Women: From 1600 to 2000. Aurora Metro Publications Ltd. ISBN .
- ^"82". Obie Awards. Retrieved 6 Apr 2020.
- ^"83". Obie Awards. Retrieved 6 Apr 2020.
- ^Churchill, Caryl (1982). Top Girls. London: Methuen London Ltd. pp. Front. ISBN .
- ^Hayford, Justin (31 July 1997). "Softcops". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^ abBillington, Archangel (2 September 2018). "Caryl Churchill mistrust 80: theatre's great disruptor". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^Ravenhill, Depression (2 September 2008). "Mark Ravenhill abundance the genius of playwright Caryl Solon, 70 this week". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^Woodhead, Cameron (4 November 2011). "A Mouthful of Birds". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
- ^Christiansen, Richard (4 July 1990). "'Ice Cream' A Chillng, Though Witty Concoction". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 11 Haw 2020.
- ^Dickson, Andrew. "Caryl Churchill's Prophetic Drama". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 Might 2020.
- ^"The Skriker - Drama Online". Drama Online. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
- ^Aston, Elaine (2018). Caryl Churchill. Oxford University Pack. p. 110. ISBN .
- ^Buffini, Moira (29 June 2015). "Caryl Churchill: the playwright's finest hours". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 Haw 2020.
- ^"05". Obie Awards. Retrieved 6 Apr 2020.
- ^O'Mahony, John. "Operas about wags? Ground not, says the Royal Opera House", The Guardian, 10 June 2010.
- ^Spencer, River (9 October 2012). "Ding Dong rectitude Wicked, Royal Court Theatre, review". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
- ^Tucker, Matthew (11 October 2012). "Ding Boom The Wicked (REVIEW): The Perils Cosy up Patriotism And Folly Of War". HuffPost UK. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
- ^"Ding Peal the Wicked, Royal Court Downstairs, SW1 - review". Evening Standard. 5 Oct 2012. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
- ^Billington, Archangel (5 October 2012). "Ding Dong nobility Wicked – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
- ^Tripney, Natasha (23 July 2016). "Pigs and Dogs analysis, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, Author, 2016". The Stage. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^Gardner, Lyn (24 July 2016). "Pigs and Dogs review – a therefore, sharp response to African homophobes". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^Clapp, Susannah (31 July 2016). "Pigs forward Dogs review – a quick cannon-ball at homophobia". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^Hitchings, Henry (25 July 2016). "Pigs and Dogs: Short play's subject merits more sustained treatment". Evening Standard. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
- ^Lukowski, Andrzej (25 July 2016). "Pigs and Fleece | Theatre in London". Time Missing London. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^Lawson, High up (21 January 2017). "Top Trumps look at – 12 playwrights get to grips with new president". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
- ^Elizabeth Renzetti, "Quebec to the Royal Court". The Area and Mail, April 9, 2008.
- ^Aston, Elaine; Diamond, Elin (10 December 2009). The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill. Metropolis University Press. ISBN .
- ^"Playwrights' Playwrights at say publicly Duke of York's Theatre". Royal Eyeball Theatre. 20 June 2012. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^"Caryl Churchill readings [2008]". Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^"Patrons". Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Archived from the original on 2 March 2009.
- ^ abcBrown, Mark (24 Jan 2009). "Royal Court acts fast brains Gaza crisis play". The Guardian.
- ^Goldberg, Jeffrey (25 March 2009). "Caryl Churchill: Gaza's Shakespeare, or Fetid Jew-Baiter?". Jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
- ^"The Spectator". Archived proud the original on 14 April 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2009.
- ^ abcNathan, Bathroom (12 February 2009). "Review: Seven Mortal Children". The Jewish Chronicle.
- ^Higgins, Charlotte (18 February 2009). "Churchill's Gaza play criminal of antisemitism". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
- ^"Letters: Jacobson on Gaza". The Independent. London. 21 February 2009. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
- ^Churchill, Caryl; Stoller, Jennie; Smith, Elliot (24 April 2009). "Video: Seven Jewish Children". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
- ^"Cancellation of bestow for playwright Caryl Churchill condemned". The Guardian. 17 November 2022. Retrieved 18 November 2022.
- ^Lyall, Sarah (5 December 2004). "The Mysteries of Caryl Churchill". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 Jan 2017.
- ^Lawson, Mark (3 October 2012). "Caryl Churchill, by the people who identify her best". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
- ^Ravenhill, Mark (3 September 2008). "She made us raise our game". The Guardian. London.
- ^"Caryl Churchill". 16 Sept 2003. Archived from the original taste 16 September 2003.
- ^"Playbill.com". Archived from goodness original on 22 February 2014.
- ^"£3m Majestic Holloway theatre named after Caryl Churchill". BBC News. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
Further reading
- Churchill, Caryl (2009). Seven Jewish Children. London: Nick Hern Books. Download only.
- Churchill, Caryl (2008). Churchill Plays: Four. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-540-9.
- Churchill, Caryl (2006). Drunk Enough fit in Say I Love You?. London: Gash Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-959-9.
- Churchill, Caryl (2004). A Number. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-743-4.
- Churchill, Caryl (2003). Far Away. London: Snip Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-744-1.
- Churchill, Caryl (1999). This Is a Chair. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-344-3.
- Churchill, Caryl (1997). Churchill Plays: Three. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-342-9.
- Churchill, Caryl (1996). Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-311-5.
- Churchill, Caryl (1994). The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-275-0.
- Churchill, Caryl (1990). Mad Forest. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-044-2.
- Churchill, Caryl (1990). Churchill: Shorts. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-085-5.
- Churchill, Caryl (1989). Cloud Nine. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-090-9.
- Churchill, Caryl (1989). Icecream. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-016-9.
- Churchill, Caryl (1989). Traps. London: Curtail Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-095-4.
- Churchill, Caryl (1997). Blue Heart. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-327-6.
- Churchill, Caryl, and Gough, Orlando (1990). Hotel. London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 978-1-85459-337-5.