Caryl churchill biography jenkins

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (winner of a 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama) chats with Prize Director Michael Kelleher about British theater legend Caryl.
He remarks, pleasingly, that “every playwright in New York is obsessed with Caryl Churchill.
BJJ: Well, Caryl Churchill is my theatre mom, like the person who I always go back to and feel inspired by, and who, in some ways, really inspired me to try and.

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on Caryl Churchill’s Far Away

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (winner of a 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama) chats with Prize Director Michael Kelleher about British theater legend Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, the power of language on the page and stage, and the point of having a playwright at all.

For a full episode transcript, click here.

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Reading list:

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Far Away by Caryl Churchill • Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill • Top Girls by Caryl Churchill • Prince • Jasmine Lee Jones on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun • Cristina and Her Double: Essays by Herta Müller

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From the episode:

Michael Kelleher: That idea of like the collective construction of meaning in, especially, you know, I think is especially significant in theater but it does kind of, you know, it does bring up that question, uh, that maybe I’ll just pose to you. why have a playwright at all?

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: How dare you, Mike? Well, someone has to generate the impulse. You know, som

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was the recipient of The Vineyard’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, given each year to an emerging writer of exceptional promise. During his year-long residency, he wrote in an office carved out above The Vineyard box office. One of the plays he began that year was GLORIA, which also received a lab production for members on the road to its world premiere this spring. Branden’s work has since met with acclaim — his plays APPROPRIATE and AN OCTOROON received the 2014 OBIE Award for Best New American Play, and the New York Times wrote that he “has established himself as one of the country’s most original and unsettling dramatists.” Branden spoke with Literary Associate Miriam Weiner about themes of identity and authorship in his work and ambition in New York City.

**Miriam Weiner: What was the seed idea for GLORIA?**

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: Well, the very first thing that led to the writing of this play happened while I was still living in Berlin. I had moved to Germany in 2010 for a couple years. It was right before I was about to move back to the

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Carol Churchill dips into dystopian territory with this short, chilling and atmospheric revival of Far Away.

This review won’t be very long because Far Away was one of the shortest plays I have seen in the West End. Novel in its way, it has 3 scenes, one act, lasts precisely 60 minutes, and you’re in the queue at Five Guys. So is short merciful? Well, in this instance, it is, yes. Far Away is a set of circumstances thrust into a dystopian future. I can’t be any more specific than that because there are no more specifics.

Now I would say that sci-fi is not Caryl Churchill’s natural home, given that her place among the greats of British Playwriting came about through hits like Cloud Nine, Top Girls and Serious Money. I saw the original production of Serious Money at the Royal Court Theatre (her enduring second home) with Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina and Leslie Manville – and how we laughed at the unbridled greed of a newly deregulated city, captured so brilliantly by Churchill’s clipped and witty dialogue. But fools like us learned nothing from the play and we im