Cloud 9 (play)

Cloud 9
Revised American edition, Methuen, 1984.
Written byCaryl Churchill
Date premiered14 February 1979 (1979-02-14)
Place premieredDartington College of Arts, Totnes
Original languageEnglish
SubjectColonialism, gender
SettingAct I: A British colony in Victorian Africa
Act II: London in 1979

Cloud Nine (sometimes stylized as Cloud 9) is a 1979 British two-act play written by British playwright Caryl Churchill. It was workshopped with the Joint Stock Theatre Company in late 1978 and premiered at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, on 14 February 1979.[1]

The two acts of the play form a contrapuntal structure. Act I is set in British colonial Africa in the Victorian era, and Act II is set in a London park in 1979. However, between the acts only twenty-five years pass for the characters. Each actor plays one role in Act I and a different role in Act II – the characters who appear in both acts are played by different actors in the first and second. Act I parodies the conventional comedy genre and satirizes Victorian society and colonialism. Act II shows what could happen when the restrictions of both the comic genre and Victorian ideology are loosened.

The play uses controversial portrayals of sexuality and obscene language, and establishes a parallel between colonial and sexual oppression.[2] Its humour depends on incongruity and the carnivalesque, and helps to convey Churchill's political message about accepting people who are different and not dominating them or forcing them into particular social roles.

Cloud Nine is one of Churchill's most renowned works. The play was featured in The Royal National Theatre's NT2000 poll of the 100 most significant plays of the 20th century[3][4] and was also selected for Time Out New York's list of the "best plays of all time".[5] The New York production opened at Lucille Lortel's Theatre de Lys on 18 May 1981 and finished on 4 September 1983, and was directed by Tommy Tune with an original incidental music score by Maury Yeston.[6]

  1. ^ Caryl Churchill, Plays: One (London: Methuen London, 1985)
  2. ^ Michael Patterson, The Oxford Guide to Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
  3. ^ Lister, David (18 October 1998). "'Waiting for Godot' voted best modern play in English". The Independent. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  4. ^ Archive webpage by the National Theatre of the NT2000 One Hundred Plays of the Century
  5. ^ Propst, Andy (6 February 2017). "The 50 best plays of all time". Time Out. Time Out Group Plc. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  6. ^ "Cloud 9 at Lucille Lortel's Theatre de Lys 1981-1983".