CARYL CHURCHILL (Playwright). Born in London and raised in Montreal, Churchill was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Downstairs, her first play originally staged in 1958, was written while she was still at university and won an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge's Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year. Churchill served as the Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-1975). With theatre groups Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, she wrote Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Three More Sleepless Nights (1980), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986). Top Girls was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. It transferred to Joseph Papp's Public Theatre later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), The Skriker (1994), Far Away which premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry, a new translation of Seneca's Thyestes (2001), A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning, a new version of August Strindberg's A Dream Play (2005), and The Public’s recent Drunk Enough to say I Love You?, directed by James Macdonald, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2006. Caryl Churchill lives in London.
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