Churchill - Caryl Churchill Plays: Three (NHB Modern Plays)

Caryl Churchill

PLAYS: THREE

introduced by the author

A Mouthful of Birds

co-author: David Lan

Icecream

Mad Forest

Lives of the Great Poisoners

co-authors: Orlando Gough and Ian Spink

The Skriker

Thyestes

translated from Seneca

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Each of these pieces came about in an entirely different way. Icecream is simply a play I wrote. A Mouthful of Birds, Mad Forest and Lives of the Great Poisoners all came from some kind of work with others. The Skriker, like Icecream, was a solitary piece of work till rehearsal but it took the form it did because of earlier collaborations. Thyestes is a translation.

A Mouthful of Birds was a show for Joint Stock, and took Euripides Bacchae as a starting point. Usually with Joint Stock shows there was a gap between workshop and rehearsal when the writer wrote the play, but as we were working with dance as well as words we worked continuously for 12 weeks. For the writers the time still fell into something of the usual structure roughly the first four weeks were spent by us all looking into possession, violence and other states where people felt beside themselves; then David Lan and I stayed home and wrote, coming in with scenes as they were written; the last few weeks were something like a normal rehearsal. Ian Spink (choreographer) worked with the company continuously, making some material before any text was written, and some to fit specifically into scenes that were written to have dance in them. Though A Mouthful of Birds is included in this volume the writing is as much David Lans as mine, and, as with other Joint Stock shows. it owes a great deal to the company. One can only get a rough idea of the piece by reading it because a large part of it was dance.

After Icecream another Joint Stock type play, Mad Forest. Mark Wing-Davey, who had worked with Joint Stock, was at the time director of the Central School of Speech and Drama. It was early 1990 and Ceauescu had been overthrown in December. Mark wanted to take some students to Bucharest to work with students there, and asked if Id join them and then write something for the Central students end of year show. Emotions in Bucharest were still raw and the Romanian students and other people we met helped us to understand what Romania had been like under Ceauescu as well as what happened in December and what was happening while we were there. We learned far more in a short time than anyone could have done alone, and the companys intense involvement made it possible to write the play.

Meanwhile talks had been going on for some time about a piece eventually called Lives of the Great Poisoners for Ian Spinks company Second Stride, with Orlando Gough (composer) and Antony McDonald (designer), who had both done several Second Stride shows. We decided that some of the characters would dance, some sing, some speak. but they could all have a dialogue in the same scene. so this is another instance where its hard to visualise the show from the text alone. Long pieces of dance are described in a few lines of Ians stage directions. and sometimes a few words are the libretto for a long passage of song. The whole idea of the piece and its structure were worked out with Ian and Orlando before I wrote any words so it was equally made by us all. The writer has an unfair advantage because words can easily be reproduced in a book. Ians directions should be followed closely, though the detail will of course be different with each production. The music of Poisoners is integral to the piece.

Theres dance and singing in The Skriker too, but because of the way it was written it seems all right that the movement will be developed differently in each production (though again it is important to follow the stage directions closely), and even that different music could be used though I strongly recommend Judith Weirs. The Skriker is a play I was working on from before A Mouthful of Birds till after Poisoners. Sometimes it seemed like a social play with lots of characters, other times to be about just a few people. The solution I found was to have just three speaking parts, and the rest of the characters played by dancers, so that a number of stories are told but only one in words. I wrote the others as stage directions. I decided that the underworld, when the Skriker takes Josie there, would be a more completely different world if that scene were an opera, so I wrote it as a libretto. Judith Weir then wrote the music and during rehearsal Ian Spink developed the movement from the stage directions. Id never have written The Skriker that way if I hadnt already worked on other shows with dancers and singers. It brought together what had been for me two separate strands of work, plays I worked on alone and dance/music theatre pieces.

The last play in this volume is a collaboration with a dead writer, a translation of Senecas Thyestes. It was directed by James MacDonald, who also directed Lives of the Great Poisoners. There are other overlaps among these pieces Les Waters and Annie Smart were the director and designer of both Mouthful of Birds and Skriker. Antony McDonald designed Mad Forest and Poisoners.

Caryl Churchill, 1997

A MOUTHFUL OF BIRDS

by Caryl Churchill and David Lan

A Mouthful of Birds was first performed in association with the Joint Stock Theatre Group at Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 2 September 1986 and opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 27 November 1986. The cast was as follows:

On 11 October, Amelda Brown took over the roles initially played by Marjorie Yates. Marjorie Yates was a member of the original workshop company and cast.

Directed by Ian Spink and Les Waters
Designed by Annie Smart
Lighting designed by Rick Fisher

ACT ONE

Part One

1. DIONYSOS dances.

He is played by a man. He wears a white petticoat.

Skinning a Rabbit

LENA and ROY.

ROY is holding a dead white rabbit.