Caryl Churchill

Marlene hosts a dinner party in a London restaurant to celebrate her promotion to managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency. Her guests are five women from the past: Isabella Bird (1831- 1904) - the adventurous traveller; Lady Nijo (b1258) - the mediaeval courtesan who became a Buddhist nun and travelled on foot through Japan; Dull Gret, who as Dulle Griet in a Bruegel painting, led a crowd of women on a charge through hell; Pope Joan - the transvestite early female pope and last but not least Patient Griselda, an obedient wife out of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As the evening continues we are involved with the stories of all five women and the impending crisis in Marlene's own life. A classic of contemporary theatre, Churchill's play is seen as a landmark for a new generation of playwrights. It was premiered by the Royal Court in 1982. "Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell life, and at the same time feel locked in an argument with an agile and passionate mind." (John Peter, Sunday Times)

Top Girls

Cloud 9 not only marked the theatrical breakthrough of preeminent British playwright Caryl Churchill, but proved a milestone in the portrayal of sexual liberation and feminism. "A playwright of genuine audacity and assurance, able to use her considerable wit and intelligence in ways at once unusual, resonant and dramatically riveting."--Benedict Nightingale

Cloud 9

August Strindberg

A Dream Play

"The play follows the Skriker, ... in its search for love and revenge as it pursues two young women to London ..."--Back cover.

The Skriker

The Chicago Tribune calls this chilling new play "a masterpiece from one of the most valuable playwrights working today."

Far Away

Someone sneezes. Someone can’t get a signal. Someone shares a secret. Someone won’t answer the door. Someone put an elephant on the stairs. Someone’s not ready to talk. Someone is her brother’s mother. Someone hates irrational numbers. Someone told the police. Someone got a message from the traffic light. Someone’s never felt like this before. In this fast moving kaleidoscope, more than a hundred characters try to make sense of what they know.

Love and Information

The play examines gender and power relationships through the lens of 17th-century witchcraft trials in England.

Vinegar Tom

"The greatest living English-language playwright and, in my opinion, the most important English-language playwright since Williams."-Tony Kushner

A Play from Romania

Mad Forest

David Lan

A Mouthful of Birds

A remarkable new play by one of England's most astonishing playwrights.

A Number

لطیفه‌ی پس از شام

Top Girls (Student Editions)

A fascinating meditation on human cloning, personal identity and the conflicting claims of nature and nurture. Bernard thought he was an only child. One day he learns the shocking truth: he is just one of a number of clones. Together, he and his father confront epic questions of identity, intimacy and belonging. Caryl Churchill's play A Number pushes the boundaries of science and ethics with an astonishing twist on the dynamics of the father/son relationship. It was originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2002, winning the Evening Standard Award for Best Play.

Softcops

Terry Gifford

Gill Round

Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen and Other Plays

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Thyestes

Blue Heart consists of two related short plays, one about a father and daughter, the other about a mother and son. In Heart's Desire, a father, mother and aunt are waiting for a woman to arrive home after years in Australia. In Blue Kettle a middle-aged man and his girlfriend are involved in a con trick, making elderly women believe they are the man's long-lost mother. But neither play is what it seems. Something catastrophic is happening which disrupts and destroys them.

Blue Heart

A stunning new short play by Caryl Churchill

This is a Chair

'Make me happen' Your partner's died, could things have been different? Caryl Churchill's short play What If If Only premiered in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2021, directed by James Macdonald. This edition also includes the resonant and surreal short piece, Air. 'Caryl Churchill has remade the landscape of contemporary drama - and earned herself a place among the greats' Guardian

What If If Only (NHB Modern Plays)

Comedy / Casting: 4m, 3f w/doubling / Scenery: 2 exteriors The time-shifting comedy by the author of Top Girls created a sensation Off-Broadway directed by Tommy Tune. Here we are in 1880 darkest but British Africa as portrayed in old movies, plays and novels. Only with a difference. Both parody and spoof of the Victorian Empire and its rigid attitudes especially towards sex. There is Clive, a British functionary, his wife Betty (played by a man), their daughter Victoria (a rag doll), Clive's friend Harry an explorer, Mrs. Saunders who runs about dressed in a riding habit, Clive's son Edward who still plays with dolls and is played by a woman and Joshua a native servant who knows exactly what is really going on. What really is going on is a marvelous send up and a non-stop round robin of sexual liaisons. All this time the natives are restless in the background. The second act shifts to London in 1980 except for the surviving characters it is only twenty five years later and all those repressed sexual longings have evaporated along with the Empire. "Intelligent, inventive and funny."-The New York Times "I really don't know when I've had more fun. It blends farce, pathos into a work of total theatre."-New York Daily News

Caryl Churchill

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