Caryl Churchill Essays (1686 words) - Caryl Churchill,

Caryl Churchill Who is she and where did she come from? Caryl Churchill is one of England's most premier female, post-modern playwrights. She has strived throughout her career as theatrical personality to make the world question roles, stereotypes and issues that are dealt with everyday, like, violence, and political and sexual oppression. She has been part of many facets of performance throughout her almost sixty year career. Not only has she been a strong force on the stage, but has also had strong influences with radio and television. She is truly a talented woman dabbling in not only a Brechtian style of theatre that has been commented on time and time again, but also musicals of a sort. Churchill was born in London on September 3, 1938. She lived in England until the age of ten when her family moved to Canada. There she attended Trafalgar School in Montreal until 1955. At this time she moved back to England to attend Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. This is the key place that her career began. While studying English at Oxford she took an interest in theatre. She wrote her first three plays while at the university. Where has she been? Radio plays When her career in theatre and performance started at Oxford she began the first phase in her career. She was very focused on sounds and voice. Her first three plays, Downstairs, 1958; You've No Need to be Frightened, 1959; and Having a Wonderful Time, 1959. All three of these plays, extremely focused on sound, propelled her career into radio. For the next ten years she concentrated her energy solely on radio plays, starting off with The Ants, which she, herself, "thought of it as a TV play, but my agent Margaret Ramsey sensibly sent it to radio" (Kritzner16). This focal point gave her many advantages in this time in her career. "Most important, of course, was its openness to new playwrights. In addition, it offered an unusual freedom in that it placed few limits on length...Finally, radio had already proved its potential for serious drama" (Kritzner 16). During the time of her writing for the theatre and her "sounds phase," she was looking outward, investigating new places for her to take her art. She wrote a few stage plays during her radio stint, none of them being produced. She re-wrote some of her radio plays and eight of them were produced between the years of 1962 and 1973. She then moved on to television plays. She became very unsatisfied with it very quickly, commenting that Television...attracts me very much less...It has the attraction of a large audiences and being the ordinary peoples' medium and not being the sort of effete cultural thing that no one ever pays any attention to anyway. But as an actual medium, as a physical thing that happens, I don't find it anything like as exciting myself as the stage. I do like things that actually happen. (Kritzner 45). It was then time for her to make a change. Stage plays After a dozen years of writing primarily for the radio, Churchill finally made her move to the mainstage. She wrote Owners for Micheal Codron. The play was produced by the Royal Court Theatre in 1972. Her career went uphill from there. She became associated with a "sphere of the sometimes conflict-ridden but always politically daring and artistically committed theatre often referred to simply as 'the Court' (Kritzner 61). Churchill's reputation became paired with the Royal Court. She became the first female resident dramatist, and later help with the Young Writer's Group program. During her time at the Royal Court she wrote many plays, still focusing a great deal on sound and voice. At the same time as she held position of resident dramatist, she also worked at other theatres and with other groups. She founded the Theatre Writers' Group, now known as the Theatre Writers Union, and had works produced by Joint Stock Theatre Group and Monstrous Regiment. Historical plays During her previous playwriting time she had been very centered in time around her present. Starting a new phase in her career in the mid-1970's, she began to look at history and place her plots in appropriate time frames to make her objective, within each play, more vivid. Paired with the Monstrous Regiment and Joint Stock, Churchill "multiplied her ideas, intensified her energy, expanded the range of viewpoints she was able to encompass, presented fresh avenues for theatrical experiment, and helped her develop an integrated feminist-socialist critique of society" (Fitzsimmons 29). From this