Caryl Churchill was born in London on September 3, 1938 and grew up in England and Canada. She obtained a BA in English from Oxford University in 1960, during which she wrote three plays: Downstairs, You’ve No Need to be Frightened, and Having a Wonderful Time. Following her graduation, she started writing radio plays for the BBC, including The Ants (1962), Not, Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971), and Schreber’s Nervous Illness (1972). This particular genre forced Churchill to develop a concise writing style that would later benefit her work for the stage. Additionally, it provided her with the freedom to veer away from the limitations of traditional stage settings, allowing her to write brief scenes or make significant jumps in time and space.
In 1974, Churchill began her transition to the stage, becoming the resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre from 1974-75. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, she collaborated with theatre companies Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, both of which employed extended workshop periods for the development of new plays. These collaborations greatly influenced Churchill’s growth as a playwright. She later reflected, “This was a new way of working … I felt stimulated by the discovery of shared ideas and the enormous energy and feeling of possibilities.” Working with Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, Churchill wrote several successful plays including Light Shining on Buckinghamshire (1976), Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), and A Mouthful of Birds (1986).
Even after going solo, Churchill still used an improv workshop format to create some of her plays. Mad Forest: A Play from Romania (1990) was written when Churchill, the director, and a group of student actors from London’s Central School traveled to Romania to collaborate with local acting students and learn about the events surrounding Ceausescu’s downfall. The outcome was a play that exposed the devastating impact of prolonged repression on people’s lives and the challenging obstacles involved in enacting lasting change.
As Churchill’s career progresses, her plays become increasingly sparse and unconstrained by realism. In The Skriker (1994), she employs dream-like logic that some critics deemed nonsensical. The play delves into the modern urban life, following the Skriker, a northern goblin, as it seeks love and revenge while chasing two young women in London, constantly changing its form.
