Although it was obvious from her early radio play The Ants (1962) that Caryl Churchill could write good dialogue, she had difficulty translating that talent to a stage where she would be noticed. Nevertheless, Churchill has been writing plays--for...

Byline: MICHAEL COVENEY SEND in the clones. Imagine the future. A crazy scientist has stolen the genetic material for one replacement son and created a whole lot of them. Maybe 20. The father, Salter, is played by the great...

I. Metatheatrical Trends In his foundational work devoted to defining the difference between tragedy and metatheater, Lionel Abel identifies numerous distinguishing characteristics of metatheater. Numbered among them is the claim that "for metatheatre, order is something continually improvised by men." (1) Even...

It was the mighty Kenneth Tynan who said that among the things he could live without in the theater are Everyman characters with pretentious names like “Mr. Adam” or “Mr. Zero.” I wonder how he might have felt about Sarah Ruhl’s interpretation of the Orpheus/Eurydice...

God preserve us from the British upper classes! They are the reason I left England. I decided that I couldn’t listen to their whining sense of entitlement for one second longer, and thus fled to New York, where I promptly discovered that everyone worships the...

In the following essay, Reinelt analyzes the various theatrical forms and styles Churchill uses to challenge accepted norms in politics, economics, and race relations.

In the following essay, Keyssar analyzes the unconventional political and gender-based aspects of Churchill's plays and examines the influences and collaboration Churchill received during the writing of these works.

In the following essay, Brown explores the influence that the Taoist yin and yang principles, Theravada and Zen Buddhist ideologies, and Jain beliefs each have on Churchill's writing.

The question of how body-language and space are used in Caryl Churchill's `Top Girls' is interesting. A traditional view exists that a play is dictated by the text to the extent that the actors ought not to deviate from a pure reading. This theory emphasises authorial control and allows performers little opportunity to interpret the text for the audience. A competing view is that a play is a complete entity only when performed, aiming for a collaboration between playwright, director, performers, and audienc