Churchill, Caryl

▪ British playwright

born Sept. 3, 1938, London, Eng.

      British playwright whose work frequently deals with feminist issues, the abuses of power, and sexual politics.

      When Churchill was 10, she immigrated with her family to Canada. She attended Lady Margaret Hall, a women's college of the University of Oxford, and remained in England after receiving a B.A. in 1960. Her three earliest plays, Downstairs (produced 1958), Having a Wonderful Time (produced 1960), and Easy Death (produced 1962), were performed by Oxford-based theatrical ensembles.

      During the 1960s and '70s, while raising a family, she wrote radio dramas and then television plays for British television. Owners, a two-act, 14-scene play about obsession with power, was her first major theatrical endeavour and was produced in London in 1972. During her tenure as resident dramatist at London's Royal Court Theatre, Churchill wrote Objections to Sex and Violence (1974), which, though not well-reviewed, led to her successful association with David Hare (Hare, Sir David) and Max Stafford-Clark's Joint Stock Company and with Monstrous Regiment, a feminist group. Cloud 9 (1979), a farce about sexual politics, was successful in the United States as well as in Britain, winning an Obie Award in 1982 for best play of the year. The next year she won another Obie for best play with Top Girls (1982), which deals with women's losing their humanity in order to attain power in a male-dominated environment. Softcops (produced 1984), a surreal play set in 19th-century France about government attempts to depoliticize illegal acts, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Serious Money (1987) is a comedy about excesses in the financial world, and Icecream (1989) investigates Anglo-American stereotypes. The prolific Churchill continued to push boundaries into the late 1990s. In 1997 she collaborated with the composer Orlando Gough to create Hotel, a choreographed opera or sung ballet set in a hotel room. Also that year her surrealistic short play This Is a Chair was produced.

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