Research on Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill

Author and Playwright of our current play,"Love and Information" (2012)

Caryl Churchill was born the 3rd of September in London but she has lived in the Lake district and has lived in Montreal also. She went to Lady Margret Hall in Oxford, where she was educated and formed a liking to English. While still studying at University, she wrote her very own play called Downstairs, and in 1958, it was first performed winning an award for the Sunday Times National Union of students drama festival. She was also a writer for radio producing several plays such as , "The Ants (1962) , Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971).

She was resident dramatist at the royal court '74-75. During the 1970s and 1980s she was apart of the theatre groups of "Joint stock" and "Monstrous regiment".

Her most famous play was the 1982 play, "Top Girls", puts its mark on feminism as it centres around five women and what it means to be a successful woman. The three main pivotal points are when it starts off with Marlene getting scouted at the dinner party by the 5 leading, "women in power". Marlene then establishes her own business , an employment agency, typically would have been run by males prior; whereas now she is in charge of whom she lets on. The latter is when she confronts her stay at home working class sister who sticks to family orientated old fashioned values, this sparks social injustice as Marlene who is successful is basically confronting her and trying to get her to be as successful when she clearly wants be left as she were just because she is of a different social background and they both grew up working class in Suffolk. This also sparks of Thatcheristic qualities as she is leading over her sister , yet it contradicts her laws of independence.

  This is when In the time period of the 80s many more women were head of businesses and it was a revolution of a time where the world was dominated by men, the women wanted to make their stand. The equal pay act came into action in the 1970s, so when the 80s came women were as if not more successful that their male counterparts. During the 80s and early 70s, there was such a thing as power dressing. Women would wear uniform attire, designed in a way that match them with the male wardrobe consisting of tailored suits, jackets with padded shoulders, knee length skirts and roll neck jumpers. So the jackets that would de-emphasise breasts but the bottom part covered with a skirt to remind femininity.

But my main point is that 80s were the power house for women in a mainly male dominated world.  Their were also themes of Thatcherism, with Margret Thatcher in reign from 1979 - 1990. She made change to the country; with individuality like the right to buy your own flat and house. She sorted out trade with other countries, although she got stick for closing down mines. She was called the Iron the iron lady, as she ruled with an iron fist. She made sure that her mark was made and she wouldn't take no jib from anyone , especially when men were involved.

Caryl Churchill has a knack for keeping with the times as at the time her most famous play Top Girls was about women in power within a male dominated society, where as todays day and age, with love and information, it expresses topics that are relevant today, with the subjects of mental health, promiscuous relationships, how they affect others and friendships in terms of how they turn from good to bad or bad to good. She is a contemporary writer; and especially having freedom within writing love and information shows how independent we can be when directing and acting out the play. It also conveys how free we are in society today as a retrospect with the play "top girls" where the women strived to be independent and leaders in the patriarchal society as they were limited and it would shock people with family and old fashioned values.

Love and information is also cleverly written in contemporary form as the freedom of it all allows the actor to truly express how we feel and in todays day and age we can do all those things people are less "stiff-upper lipped" as Britain used to be in those days because of change in law and values but we can say and think what we like; and to be able to do that as an actor is great because we don't have to stick to the script exactly because we can put our own interpretation on it. The episodic effect allows it to be natural; there aren't directions and dialogue there is just lines of writing which shows how its like a conversation. The episodic effect allows certain parts of the play to link or to be completely different to the others; they aren't in any particular preference in order apart from the chapters.    

Talking a look at love and information; it is a kaleidoscopic play that tells the story of all different forms of love and informing the audience on different problems. It is of an episodic form in structure, which means that there are many characters and locations, lasts over lengthy periods of time and involves sub-plots within the main plot. An example being that the main theme of Churcher's play "love and Information"; But the sub-themes are the different forms of love, the relationships and fact based areas, like terminal explains how someone would feel when they are told they may die any minute with in a span of three years. She likes to challenge quite controversial subjects that are relevant in our day and age. For example, virtual talking of topic of having a relationship with a virtual being, or online relationships. This form of technology has only been around since the last ten years, of course technology and computers were around since the 1970s/1980s onwards- but people of Caryl's childhood would date real people when they never had the opportunity to have technological relationships. There is an aspect of friendship,  love in secret; doomed love in affair, unrealistic love in virtual. There is also minisodes of Information such as terminal informs the audience on how a patient can cope with the sudden news they could drop dead any time soon. In earthquake it informs how people cope with tragedy even if it isn't affecting them physically but emotionally.  It is split up into seven sections; sections must be done in order however but the mini plays can be done at random within the sections. My take on why there are seven sections, because it isn't specified exactly, is that there are seven deadly sins and also seven days in which the world was created in. Lust, Gluttony, Greed, laziness wrath , envy and pride are the seven deadly sins. There is definitely lust, Greed envy and pride that appear within these parts. There is also another take that it could be seven stages of grief. At first there is shock (in the first section terminal appears where a patient realises they are terminally ill) denial ( recluse appears too) and the last stage of grief is acceptance and it so happens that "facts" the last part of the play appears at the end.