Caryl Churchill Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Alisa Solomon

Critical Essay by Alisa Solomon

SOURCE: "Witches, Ranters and the Middle Class: The Plays of Caryl Churchill," in Theater, Vol. 12, No. 2, Spring, 1981, pp. 49-55.

Below, Solomon provides an overview of Churchill's writing career, her dramatic technique, and her incorporation of socialist-feminist politics into her works.

Whether Caryl Churchill writes about frighteningly familiar middle-class life, 17th Century witches, Levellers and Ranters of the 1640's, or 1960's burnouts, her plays challenge our most basic assumptions, those that make it possible for us to function in the most mundane and necessary ways. Forcing us to take a second look at our usually unshaken premises, Churchill's plays won't allow us the regular comfort of supposed truths about human nature, Western values, social organization, or historical progress.

But Churchill's plays do not occupy a safely distant meta-physical stratosphere. Their issues confront us in terms of human, earthly existence. Churchill's questionings insinuate themselves into our experiences of her...
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