Cloud 9 - Softcover

Churchill, Caryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559360992 ISBN 13: 9781559360999

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group, 1994

Synopsis

Sharp comedy and a serious purpose are splendidly combined in Cloud 9, Caryl Churchill’s provocative and amusing study of sexual politics It unlocks the imagination, liberates the mind, and leaves you weak with laughter.” Time Out

Audacious and savagely funny. Mesmerizing.” Washington Post

Cloud 9 is about relationships - between women and men, men and men, women and women. It is about sex, work, mothers, Africa, power, children, grandmothers, politics, money, Queen Victoria and Sex. Cloud 9 premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 1979, then was revived for a two-year run in New York City (1981). It has since been staged all over the world.

Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

About this title

Review:

Reading the script for Caryl Churchill's 1979 play about sex and love is a special workout for the imagination. First, she asks you to imagine characters whose sexual identities and alliances shift constantly. Then she asks you to imagine that most of the characters make an impossible leap in time, from colonial Africa in the Victorian age to contemporary Britain. Lastly, she asks you to imagine some of the male characters played by women and some female characters played by men. Churchill likes to get things good and mixed up so all the audience's preconceptions about gender, romance, and "lifestyle" are scrambled, neutralized, and possibly even rebuilt. The title refers to the state of orgasmic and emotional bliss that everyone in this play seems to be striving for so desperately.

About the Author:

Caryl Churchill (1938-) is probably the most respected woman dramatist in the English-speaking world. She is the author of some twenty plays including Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Serious Money, The Skriker, Blue Heart, Far Away and A Number, seen and admired all over the world. CARYL CHURCHILL's plays include "Cloud Nine" (revived in 2007 to huge acclaim at the Almeida, London), "Top Girls", "Serious Money", "The Skriker", "Blue Heart", "Far Away" and "A Number". Most are published by NHB.

About this edition

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1559360992
• ISBN 13: 9781559360999
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88