SOURCE: "Fen and the Production of Feminist Ecotheater," in Theater, Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring-Summer, 1994, pp. 62-71.

Rabillard is a Canadian educator and author of works on modern drama. In the following essay, she examines Fen within the context of "ecofeminism"—Churchill's attempt to "merge ecological and socialist-feminist concerns. "

I

Caryl Churchill is, in the best sense, a playwright of ideas. In her early works, she took inspiration from the theories of such writers as Sigmund Freud (Schreber's Nervous Illness), Frantz Fanon and R. D. Laing (The Hospital at the Tune of the Revolution), and Michel Foucault (Softcops). Speaking of one of the dramas that made her name [in the introduction to her Churchill: Shorts (1990)], she remarked that "Fanon's Black Faces, White Masks was one of the things (along with Genet) that led to Joshua, the black servant, being played by a white in Cloud Nine." Moreover, Churchill's eclectic reading...