INFORMATION ABOUT CARYL CHURCHILL

Caryl Churchill was born on the 3rd September 1938 in London.
She Is a British playwright known for dramatizing the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. She is the daughter of Jan Brown, a fashion model and Robert Churchill, political cartoonist. In 1961 she married David Harter. They have three sons and live in Hackney East London After World War 11, her family emigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Churchill was ten year old. In Montreal, she attended Trafalgar Schools for girls.

She returned to England to attend university, and in 1960 she graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, a women's college at Oxford University with a degree in English Literature. She also began her writing career there. Her four earliest plays, Downstairs (produced 1958), You've No Need To Be Frightened, Having A Wonderful Time (1960) and Easy Death (produced 1962) were performed at oxford by student theatre ensembles. 

Love and Information was first performed was first performed at The Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square, London on Thursday 6th September 2012. 

Cast
 Nikki Amuka-Bird Linda Bassett Scarlett Brookes Amanda Drew Susan Engel Laura Elphinstone John Heffernan Joshua James Paul Jesson Billy Matthews Justin Salinger Amit Shah Rhashan Stone Nell Williams Josh Williams Sarah Woodward
 
Director   
 James Macdonald Set Designer   Miriam Buether Costume Designer  Laura Hopkins Lighting Designer  Peter Mumford Sound Designer   Christopher Shutt Casting Director   Amy Ball Assistant Director  Caitlin MacLeod Production Manager  Paul Handley Stage Manager   Laura Draper Deputy Stage Manager  Fran O’Donnell Asst Stage Manager  George Cook Stage Mgmnt Work Placement Maia Alvarez Stratford Costume Supervisor  Jackie Orton Musical Director   Simon Deacon Choreographer   Stuart Hopps Dialect Coach   Majella Hurley Set Built by   Miraculous Engineering Ltd Scenic Painter   Kerry Jarrett 

CARYL CHURCHILL'S PLAYS AND AWARDS
Plays (most recent work listed first) 2012: 
Love and Information; Ding Dong the Wicked 2009: Seven Jewish Children 2008:  Bliss/Olivier Choinire, translator 2007:  Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?  2005:  A Dream Play, new version of August Stringberg's play 2002:  A Number 2000:  Far Away 1997:  This Is A Chair 1997:  Hotel 1997:  Blue Heart 1994:  The Skriker 1994:  Thyestes, translator 1991:  Lives of the Great Poisoners 1990:  Mad Forest: a Play from Romania 1989:  Ice Cream 1987:  Serious Money 1986:  A Mouthful of Birds, with David Lan 1984:  Softcops 1983:  Fen 1982:  Top Girls 1980:  Three More Sleepless Nights 1979:  Cloud Nine 1978:  Vinegar Tom 1977:  Traps 1976:  Light Shining in Buckinghamshire 1975:  Objections to Sex and Violence 1973:  Owners
 

Awards 2001:  Obie Sustained Achievement Award 1988:  

Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, Serious Money 1987:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Serious Money 1987:  Obie Award for Best New Play, Serious Money 1987:  Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year, Serious Money 1984:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fen 1983:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Top Girls, runner-up 1982:  Obie Award for Playwriting, Top Girls 1981:  Obie Award for Playwriting, Cloud Nine 1961:  Richard Hillary Memorial Prize 1958:  Sunday Times/National Union of Students Drama Festival Award, Downstairs

 
Her early works developed Bertolt Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of Epic Theatre to explore issues of gender and sexuality.
From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of Dance-Theatre, incorporating techniques developed from performance tradition initiated by Antonin Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fable Dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and Surrealistic narratives characteristics her work as postmodernist.
It was while raising a family in the 1960's and 70's that Churchill began write short radio dramas for BBC radio. These included the Ants (1962), Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971) and Schreger's Nervous illness (1972). She also wrote television plays for the BBC including The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). These, as well as some of her radio plays, have been adapted for the stage.

HOW DO HER PLAYS EXPERIMENT WITH THEATRICAL CONVENTION 
Caryl had made every theatre trip on adventure into the unknown with relentless urge to experiment the hasn't abated over almost 40 plays. Caryl has an active political conscience on succeeding generations and is a relentless experimenter with form.

That last quality is, for me, the key to an extraordinary career that has yielded close to 40 days and made Churchill an iconic figurehead. At Oxford she focused exclusively on short plays for radio. She had her first stage play. Owners, put at the Royal Court Theatre in 1972 at a time where there were scarcely any role - models for women dramatists.

Caryl Churchill is a materialist playwright. In her work she begins with the material conditions which testify to the power relations within society at a given time in history.
She builds her plays, which range widely across such subjects as the witch-hunts of the seventeenth century in Vinegar Tom (1972), the sex lives of contemporary Londoners in cloud Nine (1979). Caryl Churchill combine theatricals inventiveness with social critique in her plays. Churchill consistently relates to political ideas in theatrical terms.

Churchill examines political structures through a conscious evaluation of traditional theatre structure. In particular, Churchill finds epic theatres politics invaluable to her socialist feminists dramaturgy. Detailed analysis of the two works enables us to determine the extent to which Churchill applies epic techniques to a politics that incorporates various orientation and class.

Churchill explores to artificially of power structures, especially in patriarchal society, more over by using devices, Churchill connects the way in which an actor represents his or her role in her role in the audience to the way in which and individual represents a self society.
Churchill makes a link "Playing a role" in theatre and playing "role" in society.
Churchill continues and extends her interests, including issues patriarchy, social structure and economic changes.

Churchill builds up theatrical techniques from both Brechtian epic theatre and personal areas of theatre, reshapes traditional devices and melds than into an original style.
Churchill uses Brechtian historization to analyse the relationship between women at different social positions through history.

Churchill examines the different class consciousness and conflicts that characterize women in different moments of capitalism. By examining these two works, this study explores the independence of the theatrical and political in Churchills new grammar of discussing, viewing and writing plays.

It is this writers assertion that the use of structure is another technique that can be affectively employed to positively engage theatre audiences with work that responds to global events, making redundant any likelihood of simply telling an audience what they already know.

Structure, the internal framework of the play is a powerful way in which playwright can articulate and symbolise that relationship with an response to global events. Allowing the structure of work, the size and shape and length of scenes for example, to have a symbolic representation can moon the structure itself acts as a metaphor silent yet effecting narrative, beyond the ordinary manner of conveying themes and meaning through words, dialogue characters.

Structure can be used to influence and impact upon an audience in an almost sublimely manner. The modernists notion that the structure of an artistic work is intrinsically link with its ability to engage with the world is of particular relevance to this idea.

Structure is important because it allows the playwright to either impose order onto a seemingly chaotic world, or indeed impose chaos onto an ordered world.
Plot structure is a way a dramatist forms reality into a play. Structure is necessary because it creates a logical sequence from chaos, it turns the random action of life into the structured action of a play.

Themes, Churchills dramaturgy is above all the staging of desire - that's the theme and Desire.