A Number

by Caryl Churchill

Overview

A fascinating meditation on human cloning, personal identity and the conflicting claims of nature and nurture.

Bernard thought he was an only child. One day he learns the shocking truth: he is just one of a number of clones. Together, he and his father confront epic questions of identity, intimacy and belonging.

Caryl Churchill's play A Number pushes the boundaries of science and ethics with an astonishing twist on the dynamics of the father/son relationship. It was originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2002, winning the Evening Standard Award for Best Play.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780011417
Publisher:	Hern, Nick Books
Publication date:	10/20/2014
Series:	NHB Modern Plays
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	815 KB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Caryl Churchill is a leading playwright who has written widely for the stage, television and radio.

Her stage plays include: Owners (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1972); Objections to Sex and Violence (Royal Court, 1975); Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Joint Stock, 1976); Vinegar Tom (Monstrous Regiment, 1976); Traps (Royal Court, 1977); Cloud Nine (Joint Stock, 1979); Three More Sleepless Nights (Soho Poly and Royal Court, 1980); Top Girls (Royal Court, 1982); Fen (Joint Stock, 1983); Softcops (RSC, 1984); A Mouthful of Birds with David Lan (Joint Stock, 1986); Serious Money (Royal Court and Wyndham's, London, then Public Theater, New York, 1987); Icecream (Royal Court, 1989); Mad Forest (Central School of Speech and Drama, then Royal Court, 1990); Lives of the Great Poisoners with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, 1991); The Skriker (Royal National Theatre, 1994); Thyestes translated from Seneca (Royal Court, 1994); Hotel with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, 1997); This is a Chair (Royal Court, 1997); Blue Heart (Joint Stock, 1997); Far Away (Royal Court, 2000, and Albery, London, 2001, then New York Theatre Workshop, 2002); A Number (Royal Court, 2002, then New York Theatre Workshop, 2004); A Dream Play after Strindberg (Royal National Theatre, 2005); Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (Royal Court, 2006, then Public Theater, New York, 2008); Bliss, translated from Olivier Choinière (Royal Court, 2008); Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (Royal Court, 2009); Love and Information (Royal Court, 2012); Ding Dong the Wicked (Royal Court, 2012); Here We Go (National Theatre, 2015); Escaped Alone (Royal Court, 2016), Pigs and Dogs (Royal Court, 2016), Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. (Royal Court, 2019) and What If If Only (Royal Court, 2021).

Editorial Reviews

“A Number confirms Chuchill’s status as the first dramatist of the 21st century. On the face of it, it is human cloning… Like all Churchill’s best plays, A Number deals with both the essentials and the extremities of human experience… The questions of this brilliant, harrowing play asks are almost unanswerable, which is why they must be asked” – Sunday Times

“Caryl Churchill’s magnificent new play only last an hour but contains more drama, and more ideas, than most writers manage in a dozen full-length works.” – Daily Telegraph

“Caryl Churchill’s never stands still. After the dystopian nightmare of Far Away, she now comes up with a challenging new form of moral inquiry. And the key question she asks in this play is from what the essential core of self derives: from nature or nurture, genetic inheritance or environmental circumstance?” – Guardian

“Churchill’s harrowing bioethics fable leaves us with a number of things to chew on.” – Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago

“Stunning… A Number, you see, is a gripping dramatic consideration of what happens to autonomous identity in a world where people can be cloned. The invaluable Ms. Churchill has not begun to stop surprising and unbalancing theatergoers. Since the 1970's this British dramatist has produced studies of a world quaking under constant siege in which style somehow always uniquely mirrors content. She has pondered mutations in gender (Cloud Nine) and language (Blue Heart), as well as the seismic disruptions of revolution (Mad Forest), civil war (Far Away) and environmental poisoning (The Skriker). She has now moved on to ponder a threat to the very cornerstone of Western civilization since the Renaissance: the idea of human individuality, a subject she manages to probe in depth in a mere hour of spartan sentences and silences. It is hard to think of another contemporary playwright who combines such economy of means and breadth of imagination.” — Ben Brantley, New York Times

From the Publisher