Caryl churchill biography title

Caryl Churchill is a leading playwright who has written widely for the stage, television and radio.

Her stage plays include: Owners (Royal Court Theatre, London, ); Objections to Sex and Violence (Royal Court, ); Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Joint Stock, ); Vinegar Tom (Monstrous Regiment, ); Traps (Royal Court, ); Cloud Nine (Joint Stock, ); Three More Sleepless Nights (Soho Poly and Royal Court, ); Top Girls (Royal Court, ); Fen (Joint Stock, ); Softcops (RSC, ); A Mouthful of Birds with David Lan (Joint Stock, ); Serious Money (Royal Court and Wyndham's, London, then Public Theater, New York, ); Icecream (Royal Court, ); Mad Forest (Central School of Speech and Drama, then Royal Court, ); Lives of the Great Poisoners with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, ); The Skriker (Royal National Theatre, ); Thyestes translated from Seneca (Royal Court, ); Hotel with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, ); This is a Chair (Royal Court, ); Blue Heart (Joint Stock, ); Far Away (Royal Court, , and Albery, London, , then New York Theatre Workshop, ); A Number (Royal Court, , then New York Theatre Workshop, ); A Dream Play after Strindberg (Royal National Theatre, ); Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (Royal Court, , then Public Theater, New York, ); Bliss, translated from Olivier Choinière (Royal Court, ); Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (Royal Court, ); Love and Information (Royal Court, ); Ding Dong the Wicked (Royal Court, ); Here We Go (National Theatre, ); Escaped Alone (Royal Court, ), Pigs and Dogs (Royal Court, ), Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. (Royal Court, ) and What If If Only (Royal Court, ).

British playwright (born )

Caryl Lesley Churchill (born 3 September ) is a British playwright known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. Celebrated for works such as Cloud 9 (), Top Girls (), Serious Money (), Blue Heart (), Far Away (), and A Number (), she has been described as "one of Britain's greatest poets and innovators for the contemporary stage". In a dramatists' poll by The Village Voice, six out of the 20 polled writers listed Churchill as the greatest living playwright.

Early life and education

Churchill was born on 3 September in Finsbury, London, the daughter of Jan Brown, a fashion model and actress, and Robert Churchill, a political cartoonist. After the Second World War, her family emigrated to Montreal, Canada; Churchill was ten years old. In Montreal, she attended Trafalgar School for Girls.

She returned to England to attend university in , and in graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a BA degree in English Literature. She received the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize at Oxford and also began her writing career there. Her four earliest plays — Downstairs (produced ), You've No Need to be Frightened, Having a Wonderful Time (), and Easy Death (produced ) — were performed at Oxford by student theatre ensembles. Her play Downstairs was performed at the National Student Drama Festival in and won the first prize.

Work

While raising a family in the s and s, Churchill began to write short radio dramas for BBC Radio. These included The Ants (), Not, Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (), and Schreber's Nervous Illness (). She also wrote television plays for the BBC, including The After-Dinner Joke () and Crimes (). These, as well as some of her radio pl

Britishplaywright, born in London, educated in Canada and at Oxford University. She first attracted critical notice with Owners (), a sardonic comedy about the effects of property and profiteering on personal relationships. This was followed by Objections to Sex and Violence (), an exploration of the subjects of the title; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (), about radical politics in the Cromwellian era; Vinegar Tom (), about the witchhunts and misogyny of the same era; and Cloud Nine (), a serio-comedy which moves from the colonies in Victorian times to contemporary London, and requires some of its actors to embody more than one gender as well as more than one character, by way of debating the uncertainties and confusions of sexuality. The impressive Top Girls () opens with a surreal dinner party, hosted by the high-achieving managing director of a secretarial agency, Marlene, whose guests include exemplary women from history and legend, but in the realistic second half some harsh suggestions are made about the nature of women's ‘liberation’, Thatcherism, and the ‘enterprise culture’ of the s. There followed Fen (), a portrait of a troubled rural community in East Anglia, and researched by the author in conjunction with the Joint Stock Company, which presented it; Serious Money (), a Jonsonian comedy of humours about financial practice and malpractice in the City of London; Mad Forest (), the result of field trips to Romania with drama students, and about that country before, during, and after the uprising against Ceausescu; and The Skriker (), a highly visual piece in which creatures from fairytales and folklore invade the lives of two working-class girls. Caryl Churchill is a socialist and a feminist, but her best plays are notable for their intelligent and openminded exploration of social, political, and moral issues, as well as for their stylistic inventiveness.