Preface

Caryl Churchill ranks as one of the foremost playwrights in contemporary British theatre．Her work has been staged around the globe and is internationally acclaimed as much for its trenchant socio-political critiquing of a world scarred by social injustice and inequality，as its capacity for stylistic experimentation．

The six plays explored in this study through a Foucauldian lens reveal Churchill's enduring concern with disciplinary，regulatory powers，from Vinegar Tom（1976），her Brechtian-informed treatment of the demonization of women in the seventeenth century and modern day，through to the experimentally conceived The Skriker（1994），a play which portends ecological disaster on a world-wide scale．While stylistically with Churchill's theatre there are no ‘repeats’，the violent containment of the normalised，docile subject（A Mouthful of Birds）or questions of disenfranchisement，whether in terms of sexuality（Cloud Nine）or class（Fen），are repeatedly returned to．Moreover，woven throughout this Churchillian fabric are feminist concerns，highlighted in the case of the award-winning Top Girls（1982）—a critique of the Thatcherite phenomenon of women climbing the corporate，capitalist ladder and posing the still unanswered question of how women are to manage productive（work）and reproductive（family）lives in egalitarian ways．

As a woman playwright in what remains a male-dominated profession，Churchill has been a hugely important figure，pioneering the way for and inspiring subsequent generations of women dramatists in the UK．Her socialist-feminist politics and aesthetics were also hugely influential for theatre scholars like myself attached to writing critically and theoretically about the feminist ideas encapsulated in her theatre．When in 2011 I had the privilege of working with Professor Jiyang Qian as a visiting scholar attached to Lancaster University and undertaking the research for this book，it became clear to me in the course of our conversations that increased access to Churchill's theatre could also prove inspirational to theatre-makers and scholars in China—especially those who，like Churchill，look to imagine and achieve a world that is more equally righted．And with the publication of Professor Qian's study comes the valuable opportunity for a cross-border，between UK and China，Churchillian dialogue to begin．

Professor Elaine Aston

Lancaster University

March 2014