Rosemary Vigil April 6, 2016 Dramaturgy Notes A Number by Caryl Churchill Scene 1 ● B2 tells Salter that there are a number of other clones ● Salter insists that B2 is the first and was a normal birth ● Salter brings up suing them ● B2 struggles with the value of the other clones and his identity ● B2 admits he thinks he isn’t the original ● Salter Confesses that he was a copy and that the original and the mother had been killed in a car crash Scene 2 ● Salter is with B1 the original ● Salter tried to pass blame to scientists ● B1 confronts Salter about being sent away and replaced ● Salter claims that B1 was perfect and that was the reason for cloning ● B1 asks him why he didn’t come to the room after the mother died Scene 3 ● Salter with B2 ● They discuss a meeting between B2 and B1 ● B1 was hostile and B2 considers leaving the country and wants to know how his mother died ● Salter confesses she committed suicide under a train when B1 was two ● Salter tried to raise B1 for two years but gives up and tries to start again ● B2 says they both hate him for this and that he would feel safe from B1 if he left ● Salter tells B2 that he loves him Scene 4 ● B1 after he has murdered B2 with Salter ● Salter wants to know how it happened ● B1 refuses him details ● Salter admits that he was a bad father and that he did hear B1’s cried but didn’t know how to help ● Salter says he could have killed B1 but sent him to be cared for ● Salter remembers how perfect B1 was before his mother died and wanted to start over Scene 5 ● Salter with another clone Michael who was raised by a different family ● Salter tries to get Michael to tell him something specific about himself ● Michael tells him facts about his life but none are specific enough for Salter ● Salter asks him if he is upset about the other clones ● Michael find it “delightful” ● Salter realizes that he has failed as a father and won’t be able to start over Conversation Starters ● Your understanding of nature vs nurture? ● Do you think cloning is morally right in today’s world? ● How would you react if you had a clone? ● Did Salter clone his son because he loved him or to redeem himself? ● Would this play be considered science fiction 30 years ago? ● How would you differentiate between the sons? Caryl Churchill’s Background ● UK playwright ● Marries a Barrister had 3 sons ● Struggles between being a good mother and playwright in the 60s (202) ○ “Had Caryl Churchill not, however, had a husband and children, she would not have become the kind of playwright she is today. It was precisely that sensation of being isolated and "cooped up," of defining her life essentially in terms of motherhood and marriage, rather than the external events of the sixties, that gradually politicized her.” (201) ■ Gave her life experiences about the topics she wrote about. ○ "I felt guilty if I did not accomplish something while I was paying someone else to baby-sit." (203) ● Began writing radio plays first ○ Most women listened to radio ○ This was accommodating for a female playwright because she didn’t have to leave home to write and it took little effort to stage(202) Other Titles ● “Her first radio play, The Ants, was aired on Radio 3 in 1962.” (202) ○ “As in many of her later works, the insects in this play are a resonant image of the oppressed individuals of a capitalist society.” ● Owners ○ “For Caryl, the pattern began to change after the production of Owners by the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1972. She wrote Owners in three days: "I'd just come out of hospital after a particularly gruesome late miscarriage. Still quite groggy and my arm ached because they'd given me an injection that didn't work. Into it went for the first time a lot of things that had been building” 203 ● “Caryl joined with an alternative theater company, the Joint Stock Company, in 1976 to create Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.” (207) ○ About England after a Civil War ○ “Joint Stock was committed to a collective, ensemble rehearsal process and to creating a theater that was unquestionably political without being doctrinaire.” (209) ● Vinegar Tom 1976 ○ “In Vinegar Tom, a pervasive and complex terror of women by both men and women, what Dinnerstein asserts as "the crucial psychological fact... that all of us, female as well as male, fear the will of woman,"” (210) ○ “In contrast, Vinegar Tom was, from its early stages, a work created in collaboration with Monstrous Regiment, a feminist-socialist theatre company formed in 1975 (dominated by women but including men) with the goal of "shifting consciousness in the area of women's relation to society"” (210) ● Top Girls (1982) ● Love and Information (2012) ○ Performed here this year directed by Cassie Gill ● Cloud Nine (1979) ○ Performed here 3 years ago ● Traps (1976) Premiere ● premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2002. ● 65 minutes long Timeline ● 2001 U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that plants are protectable by patents in the case. ○ Introduced the ownership of DNA and ownership of life ○ Objectifying life ● 2002 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones ● Technology was increasing ● Social networking was becoming more popular ● George W. Bush was president ● Sci Fi was making it’s way into the mainstream again ● The use of computers in the home was increasing ○ leading to an increase in the spread of information ● Human Genome Project ○ Started in 1990 announced officially completed in 2003 ○ An international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint. Cloning Timeline ● ○ The play was written during a time of public debate over the ethics of cloning. ● “In 1998, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but said the experiment was interrupted very early when the clone was just a group of four cells.” ● “It was not until 1996, however, that researchers succeeded in cloning the first mammal from a mature (somatic) cell taken from an adult animal. After 276 attempts, Scottish researchers finally produced Dolly, the lamb from the udder cell of a 6-year-old sheep.” ● “In 2001, researchers produced the first clone of an endangered species: a type of Asian ox known as a guar. Sadly, the baby guar, which had developed inside a surrogate cow mother, died just a few days after its birth” ● Ocata Therapeutics ( named Advanced Cell Technology, Incorporated (ACT) until November 2014) is a biotechnology company located in Marlborough, Massachusetts, USA. The company specializes in the development and commercialization of cell therapies for the treatment of a variety of diseases. Ocata is pri ● Reproductive cloning ○ “This may conflict with long-standing religious and societal values about human dignity, possibly infringing upon principles of individual freedom, identity and autonomy.” ● Therapeutic Cloning ○ “These stem cells can be used in experiments aimed at understanding disease and developing new treatments for disease.” Premiere at the Royal Court in 2002 ● ○ Daniel Craig and Michael Gambon ● Lyn Gardner with The Guardian says: ● “But the success of a disturbing evening lies in Churchill's ability to raise big moral issues through the interstices of close human encounters.” ● “Churchill is not, however, offering us a debate on the ethics of cloning. What she does, in a series of fraught, emotional encounters, is use the scientific possibility to address basic human questions”
Sheffield Crucible in 2006 ● ○ Starring actual father and son Timothy and Samuel West ● Lyn Gardner with the Guardian ○ “Churchill's play is as slippery as an alley cat and sometimes it's hard to keep hold of its teasing tail, but her ruptured dialogue and short urgent scenes give immediacy to lives and lies that start to unravel.” ● “Perhaps it is the fact that father and son(s) are here being played by real-life father and son Timothy and Samuel West, but Churchill's play seems concerned less with the ethics of scientific advances and more with the responsibilities of parenting.” US Premiere New York Theatre Workshop in 2004 ● ○ Sam Shepard (later played by Arliss Howard) and Dallas Roberts ○ Surgical lamp ● Tristram Kenton wrote ● “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.” ● “"A Number" strikes sharp and reverberant chords of implications about the ways people rationalize bad behavior and unthinkingly objectify others, including their own flesh and blood.” The Royal Court Theatre ● non-commercial theatre ● Sloane Square in London ● English Stage Company ○ Resident theatre company ● Started as a theatre for modern and foreign theatre Michael Gambon ● Irish actor ● Best known for Albus Dumbledore ○ “Michael Gambon is best known for his role as Albus Dumbledore in five of the seven J.K. Rowling Harry Potter films.” ○ Replaced Richard Harris when he died ● Royal Academy of Dramatic Art ○ where he studied classical acting he eventually received a ; bachelor's degree in the subject. ● Philip Marlowe The Singing Detective ○ in the 1986 American public television mini-series ○ becoming a household name playing lead character ● Did mostly live theatre and television ○ Until Harry Potter Glossary ● “B2: Don’t they say you die if you meet yourself?” (Churchill 4) ● The Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley ○ The poet saw himself a couple times before dying “proving” the omen that if you see your doppelganger you will soon die (The Death) ● “B1- not a limb, they clearly didn’t take a limb like a starfish and grow” (Churchill 7) ● Starfish can regrow limbs and can regrow entire bodies from one limb ● “Salter- I think we need a good solicitor” (Churchill 9) ● “a member of the legal profession qualified to deal with conveyancing, the drawing up of wills, and other legal matters.” (Webster) ● “Put me in a cupboard” (Churchill 13) ● “a small room where things are stored” (Webster) ○ A closet ● Michael has a monologue about chambers underground with labyrinth like passages (Churchill 18) ● Pyramid tombs would have many passages and would store dead royalty Salter ● “A man in his early sixties” ● Salter can be viewed as a selfish character ○ who clones Bernard in order to have another shot at making the perfect child ● “Salter reduces him to exchange value” (Gobert 114) ○ He mentions over and over again about suing the doctors ○ He begins the play trying to shift the blame from himself ● Unsatisfied when he fails to raise a child ○ When he finds Michael to be happy because of all his surrounds he finds that the blame is on him and he has failed Bernard (B2) ● his son, forty ● The second chance Salter had taken to raise a son ○ Opens the show ○ Is lied to the entire time but still says he understand his father but hates him ● Wants his identity but advocates for the other clones ○ Salter calls the other clones things and B2 defends them ○ He is also unnerved ● For fear of being murdered by B1 he flees ○ He wants to be somewhere away from all the other possible clones ○ He ends up getting murdered Bernard (B1) ● his son, thirty five ● Salter’s original son ○ Given away at age 4 ● Is bitter at Salter for abandoning him and giving up on him ○ Salter didn’t go to him when he was crying and it has shaped his life ● Murders out of revenge rather than search for identity ○ Salter gave B2 a better life and left B1 and let people believe he had died in a car crash Michael Black ● his son, thirty five ● One of the other clones that was not supposed to be made ● Raised in a completely different environment ○ Content with life ○ Has a normal life and does not understand things from salter’s view ● Salter is unable to connect ○ He has been completely raised outside of Salter’s grip Plot ● The plot in it’s episodic manner rapidly passes through time leaving little time for rational thinking and throwing things at the audience Character ● “A number highlights the performative nature of identity even as it limns the longing for essences” (Aston 121)
Thought ● “In this Regard, Churchill’s play's metatheatrical, drawing attention to how its script, like DNA, is brought to life only ni performance” (Gobert 116) ● “Churchill focused more acutely on the relationship between the self and the body that houses it.” (Gobert 119) Diction ● “The comma, meanwhile, is one of hundreds in the script that splice independent clauses like genes” (Aston 114) ● “Absence of punctuation leaves it up to director actor etc.” (Gobert 118) Spectacle ● “The Specifics of this spare setting will be expresses of a number’s stagings whose myriad variations will reflect the contexts from which they emerge, the spaces and times in which they are performed and thus come into being” (Aston 120) Connecting with contemporary Audience ● More defining of identities ○ Pronouns ○ Race ○ Sexuality ● Struggling to find identity and the importance of one’s identity ● Family dynamics are still relevant ● Legitimacy of children ○ Are they your child if you are genetically connected ○ Or if you raised them ○ Gay marriage adoption rights