Caryl
Churchill plays don't get done often in Scotland. The last main-stage
production of the seventy-four year old iconoclast of British theatre
was in 2004, when the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow presented her 1982
look at women in society, Top Girls. That production starred This
Life's Daniela Nardini as a hard-nosed career woman who finds herself
at the dinner table with some of the most iconic women in history.
Before that we'd have to go back to 1997, when Max Stafford Clark's
Out of Joint company, with whom Churchill has frequently worked,
premiered Blue Heart at at the Traverse as part of the theatre's
Edinburgh Festival Fringe season.
It's
a welcome surprise then, to find the Citz reviving two of Churchill's
shorter works on the main stage in a slot last year occupied by a
similarly styled double bill by Samuel Beckett. Far Away and Seagulls
may not be quite as elliptical as the two Becketts, but in terms of
Churchill's audacious use of form, in the hands of Citizens artistic
director Dominic Hill, they should prove equally captivating.
Far
Away dates from 2000, and is set in a dystopian futurescape in which
the whole world is at war. As a little girl grows into womanhood, the
sheer scale of the ongoing annihilation gradually becomes
frighteningly clear. Seagulls was written in 1978, and is about what
happens to a woman who is able to move things with her mind when that
mind starts to fade.
“They're
wonderful to work on,” says Hill. “When you've got writing that's
so specific and clean, it's really rewarding picking them apart and
keeping them exact and sharp. What's great about Far Away is you've
got a writer writing predominately within what one thinks of as a
naturalistic genre, but which is actually metaphorical and ultimately
quite surreal in what it describes, but which also feels very modern.
I'm very drawn to writers that go beyond the kitchen-sink. It's
highly theatrical, but it's also very political, and deals very much
with the world we're living in now.
“Seagulls
is just a beautiful piece of writing. It was written twenty-five
years ago, but it feels very current. It's about celebrity and
talent, and what can happen to talent when it's misused or abused or
thrust into the spotlight. While it's still very much a product of
its time in terms of gender politics, it also feels very modern.
They're both small plays with big themes. There's a moment in Far
Away in particular that's very big.”
After
her early plays were produced on television and radio in the 1960s,
Churchill first came to prominence in the 1970s, when she became
resident dramatist at the Royal Court. This led to working with
Stafford-Clark and his Joint Stock company and feminist collective,
Monstrous Regiment. Churchill's first play to gain wider acclaim was
Cloud Nine, a farce about sexual politics which arrived in 1979, a
year after Seagulls.
Although
fiercely political, her penchant for experimentation meant
Churchill's work had never been didactic. Even so, arriving in the
midst of Margaret Thatcher’s first term of office as Prime
Minister, the parallels in Top Girls were plain to see.
“Just
putting eight or nine women onstage at the same time is very unusual
in itself,” Daniela Nardini says of appearing in the 2004 revival
of the play. “But it was almost like being involved in a song, the
way she writes. There were never really any pauses. She'd use a slash
as punctuation, so as soon as one person stopped speaking, another
one would come in immediately, so it needed orchestrating.
“I
find the whole experience fascinating, and I learnt so much about
these historical figures, which in itself was a wonderful concept, to
have all these great women at a dinner party together.”
Churchill's
focus on women hasn't met with universal approval, as Nardini
remembers of some of the reactions to Top Girls.
“Sometimes
I feel, and I could be wrong, that a lot of the criticisms of the
play I detected from audiences came from men. Maybe that's because
Top Girls was so dominated by women, or maybe it's because she's a
writer who speaks more to women.”
Whatever
the answer, Churchill isn't saying. Over a fifty year writing career,
which continues today, she has kept firmly off the publicity
treadmill. Despite this lack of hype, her influence on the
generations of playwrights who grew up in her wake remains
unquestionable. Shopping and F****** author Mark Ravenhill recently
curated a season of contemporary classic plays for BBC Radio 3 which
was spearheaded by Churchill's 1976 piece, Light Shining In
Buckinghamshire.
Such
acknowledgements of Churchill's status as a pioneer aren't new, as a
series of performed readings of Churchill's back-catalogue made clear
in 2008 when they were presented at the Royal Court Theatre to in
celebration of the Churchill's 70th birthday.
A
reading of Far Away was directed by playwright Martin Crimp, whose
own experiments with form are best seen in his play, Attempts on Her
Life. Crimp's cast included Benedict Cumberbatch, who performed
alongside Deborah Findlay and Hattie Morahan. For the Citizens
production, Kathryn Howden and Maureen Carr will appear alongside the
theatre's current young acting interns, Lucy Hollis and Alasdair
Hankinson.
Also
involved in the week of readings was Edinburgh-based playwright and
director Zinnie Harris, who directed Churchill's 1994 play, The
Skriker, about an ancient fairy who follows a pair of teenage mothers
in various guises. Given her own experiments with form in plays such
as The Wheel, it's no surprise to find that Harris is a fan of
Churchill.
“As
an artist she is extraordinary,” Harris says. “If you think over
the body of her work, no two Caryl Churchill plays are the same. Not
even similar. Every Churchill play is an audacious theatrical
experiment, challenging form and expectations again and again. But
this isn't experimentation for its own sake, she uses this bold
theatrical language to uncover and expose often painful truths, and
its so skilfully achieved that audiences will go happily wherever she
leads them.
“Sometimes
the surreal surprises you, sometimes it is there from the opening
moment. I love her work for that. She is like a great banner waving
to the rest of us, saying don't be lazy, keep pushing, let theatre
take you to places we haven't dreamed of yet.”
Far
Away (And Seagulls), Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, May 23rd-June 8th
Caryl
Churchill – A Literary Life
1938
– Caryl Churchill is born in London
1958-62
– Early plays are produced by Oxford-based student theatre groups.
1962-72
– Several radio plays are produced by the BBC.
1972
– Owners, Churchill's first stage play, is produced in London.
1974-75
– Resident dramatist at the Royal Court, where her play, Objections
To Sex and Violence, leads to collaborations with Joint Stock
company and Monstrous Regiment.
1978
– Seagulls.
1982
– Top Girls – A look at women in power becomes Churchill's best
known play.
1987
– Serious Money – The London stock market is scrutinised in a
piece written in rhyming couplets which wins multiple awards.
2000
– Far Away.
2009
– Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza – A ten-minute litany
written in response to the Israeli military strike in Gaza.
2012
– Love and Information – Churchill's most recent play, which
looks at knowledge, technology and the need for feeling sells out the
Royal Court before transferring to New York.
The Herald, May 21st 2013
ends
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