| Born in London on September 3, 1938, Caryl Churchill grew
up in England and Canada. In 1960, she received a BA in English from Oxford
University where she wrote three plays: Downstairs, You've No Need to be
Frightened, and Having a Wonderful Time. After graduation, she
began to write radio plays for the BBC including The Ants (1962),
Not, Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971), and Schreber's Nervous
Illness (1972). This genre forced Churchill to develop a certain economy
of style which would serve her well in her later work for the stage, but it
also freed her from the limitations of the stage, allowing, for example, the
freedom to write very short scenes or make great leaps in time and space.
In 1974, Churchill began her transition to the stage, serving as resident
dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre from 1974-75. During the 1970's and
1980's, she also collaborated with theatre companies such as Joint Stock and
Monstrous Regiment, both of which utilized an extended workshop period in
their development of new plays and both of which are generally considered to
have had a deep impact on Churchill's development as a playwright. She would
later write, "This was a new way of working ... [I felt] stimulated by the
discovery of shared ideas and the enormous energy and feeling of
possibilities." While working with Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment,
Churchill wrote a number of successful plays including Light Shining on
Buckinghamshire (1976), Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine
(1979), and A Mouthful of Birds (1986).
Even after striking out on her own, Churchill continued to utilize an
improvisational workshop setting in the development of some of her plays.
Mad Forest: A Play from Romania (1990) was written after Churchill, the
director and a group of student actors from London's Central School went to
Romania to work with acting students there and find out more about the
events surrounding the fall of Ceausescu. What finally emerged from this
process was a play that revealed the dreadful damage done to people's lives
by years of repression and the painful difficulties of lasting change.
As Churchill's remarkable career continues to develop, her plays seem to
be growing more and more sparse and less and less inhibited by realism. In
The Skriker (1994), she utilizes an associative dream logic which
some critics found to be nonsensicle. The play, a visionary exploration of
modern urban life, follows the Skriker, a kind of northern goblin, in its
search for love and revenge as it pursues two young women to London,
changing its shape at every new encounter.
Churchill married David Harter in 1961 and has three sons. Her awards
include three Obie Award (1982, 1983 & 1988) and a Society of West End
Theatre Award (1988). |
