The Enduring Mystique of Caryl Churchill
The Enduring Mystique of Caryl Churchill
By Nirmala Nataraj
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| Caryl Churchill. Photo by Stephen Cummiskey. |
Although Churchill has been writing plays for over five decades, she stopped giving interviews
many years ago. She rarely comments on critics’ analyses of her work,
but her past interviews and the words of her close collaborators, of
whom there are many, continue to spark the imaginations of those who recognize
the multiple ways in which she has pushed dramatic boundaries over the
course of her career.
Feminist and socialist politics are important facets of Churchill’s plays, as her work
challenges the oppressions and repressions of gender, class, sex, and
race—but her bold stylization is an equally prominent feature of her
writing. The fact that her work ranges from epic Brechtian dramas to
surreal “anti-plays” to disconnected slice-of-life episodes is part of
what makes it difficult to define Churchill’s style. Flashbacks, twisted
chronologies, overlapping dialogue, contradiction, repetition of word
and gesture, and different actors playing the same character in
different scenes are just some of the devices Churchill has employed in
her plays.
Given the scope of Churchill’s experimentation (with form as well as process), many critics
have noted that answering the question “What is a Caryl Churchill play?” leaves most people scratching their heads in puzzlement. Playwright April
de Angelis says, “She has turned the idea of what a play should be over and
over, revisioning it beyond the accepted imaginative boundaries, to produce
plays that are always revolutionary.”
As eager as they are to be heard, according to Churchill’s publisher of over 40 years, Nick Hern, her
characters themselves are often less “talky” (preferring to justify their existence
not with long speeches but with activity) and less obviously categorizable as
villains or protagonists than those of other playwrights. Actor Maxine Peake,
who played the title role in Churchill’s The Skriker (about a malevolent
fairy who manipulates two teenage mothers) in 2014 at London’s Royal Exchange
Theatre, describes Churchill’s characters as “coming more from a physical
impulse rather than a cerebral one.”
Churchill and her collaborators are often surprised by the plays that emerge from her
imagination. Hern says, “The plays just turn up, without warning. I think she’s
one of those shamanistic writers, in the way Harold Pinter was. A play isn’t
planned or premeditated; it’s scratching an itch. They come to me and I sit
down to read them, having absolutely no idea what the length or subject matter
or form will be.” Much like Pinter, Churchill is also mordantly witty, whether
she is training her eye on large-scale social ills or the quirky dynamics of an
intimate relationship. A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff says,
“Churchill’s plays are supremely alive because the scenes are endlessly active.
They’re about transactions, power, competition, desire.”
Love and Information premiered at the Royal
Court Theatre in 2012, under the direction of Churchill’s frequent collaborator
James Macdonald. De Angelis notes that this enigmatic play is an exploration of
two of the most powerful human themes: needing to know and needing to love. Love
and Information is a collection of 57 short, episodic vignettes that use
a series of interactions between mostly unnamed characters to explore
knowledge, meaning, and how we make sense of information in our lives. Each
vignette is self-contained and characters are not repeated from one scene to the
next, meaning that the dozen actors in our production are responsible for
playing multiple roles. Some of the scenes last only five seconds, and none are
longer than five minutes. Because Churchill does not include stage directions
or character descriptions in Love and Information, the artistic team is
tasked with filling in the blanks and creating the world of the play according
to the production’s specific needs and intentions.
Overall, Love and Information presents an assortment of stories and perspectives that leave
much to the viewer’s imagination. Indeed, a viewer’s process of making sense of
the play may be the ultimate point that Churchill is attempting to make. As she
has said, “I don’t set out to find a bizarre way of writing. I certainly don’t
think that you have to force it. But, on the whole . . . I enjoy finding the
form that seems to best fit what I’m thinking about.”
“Decision”
(a scene
from Caryl Churchill’s script for Love and Information exactly as it appears on the page)
I’ve written down all the reasons to leave the country and all the reasons to stay.
So how does that work out?
There’s things on both sides.
How do you feel about it?
No, I’m trying to make a rational decision based on the facts.
Do you want me to decide for you?
Based on what? The facts don't add up.
I’d rather you stayed here. Does that help?
For more about Love and Information, be sure to read our latest edition of Words on Plays! Click here to order online.
For tickets to Love and Information visit act-sf.org/information.
