The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 12/10/2009
EAN 9780521728942, ISBN10: 0521728940

Paperback, 214 pages, 22.6 x 15 x 1.4 cm
Language: English

Caryl Churchill's plays are internationally performed, studied and acclaimed by practitioners, theatre scholars, critics and audiences alike. With fierce imagination the plays dramatise the anxieties and terrors of contemporary life. This Companion presents new scholarship on Churchill's extraordinary and ground-breaking work. Chapters explore a cluster of major plays in relation to pressing social topics – ecological crisis, sexual politics, revolution, terror and selfhood – providing close readings of texts in their theatrical, theoretical and historical contexts. These topic-based essays are intercalated with other essays that delve into Churchill's major collaborations, her performance innovations and her influences on a new generation of playwrights. Contributors explore Churchill's career-long experimentation – her risk-taking that has reinvigorated the stage, both formally and politically. Providing a new critical platform for the study of a theatrical career that spans almost fifty years, the Companion pays fresh attention to Churchill's poetic precision, dark wit and inexhaustible creativity.

Caryl Churchill chronology
1. Introduction
on Caryl Churchill Elaine Aston and Elin Diamond
2. On feminist and sexual politics Janelle Reinelt
3. On owning and owing
Caryl Churchill and the nightmare of capital Jean E. Howard
4. On the challenge of revolution Mary Luckhurst
5. On text and dance
new questions and new forms Libby Worth
6. On Caryl Churchill's ecological drama
right to poison the wasps? Sheila Rabillard
7. On performance and selfhood in Caryl Churchill R. Darren Gobert
8. On Churchill and terror Elin Diamond
9. On collaboration
'not ordinary, not safe' Elaine Aston
10. On Churchill's influences Dan Rebellato
Select bibliography
Caryl Churchill.