SOURCE: Rabillard, Sheila. “Fen and the Production of a Feminist Ecotheater.” Theater 25, no. 1 (spring–summer 1994): 62–71.

In the following essay, Rabillard examines the concepts of feminism, ecology, and socialism in Churchill's Fen.

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 Time of the Revolution), and Michel Foucault (Softcops). Speaking of one of the dramas that made her name, 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.”¹ Moreover, Churchill's eclectic reading in philosophy, psychology, and politics informs the structure and production process of her drama, as well as its content. Softcops is not just...