[.ca] Cloud Nine (ISBN 0573016682)

From Amazon.com:
Reading the script for Caryl Churchill's 1979 play about sex and love is a special workout for the imagination. First, she asks you to imagine characters whose sexual identities and alliances shift constantly. Then she asks you to imagine that most of the characters make an impossible leap in time, from colonial Africa in the Victorian age to contemporary Britain. Lastly, she asks you to imagine some of the male characters played by women and some female characters played by men. Churchill likes to get things good and mixed up so all the audience's preconceptions about gender, romance, and "lifestyle" are scrambled, neutralized, and possibly even rebuilt. The title refers to the state of orgasmic and emotional bliss that everyone in this play seems to be striving for so desperately.

Personal Epiphanies:
Cloud Nine is an amazing play, a break-through drama in its time. Churchill plays fast and loose with the decades in her deconstruction of the glacial change of gender typing from Victorian times until the late '70's. She blends cartooned and naturalistic characterization to demonstrate the impact of character types on our deepest ideas of self. This play is funny, revelatory, and terribly moving.

Moral Certainties and Uncertainties:
This play is an interesting approach to the question of morality in the 'modern' age. It contrasts two worlds, one of moral certainty in a Victorian colonial home, and one of complete amorality and uncertainty in contemporary Britain. It does however go beyond these issues to deal with other important issues like Gender roles and the general issue of both mental and physical 'colonization' of people by society. This play should be read by anyone even remotely interested in these themes.

For those into theatrical arts:
For those of you who are familiar whith Brechtian practices this is a very good source. However, if you are not into the study of performance this might not be the book for you. It is very explicit with sexual orientation and questions gender and social status.

Excellent Study in Alienation:
As far as Brechtian plays go, Churchill is a master at alienation and disidentification- characters in this play are played as the protagonist's projection of who he thinks they should be (ie: the westernized African servant is played by a white actor). Although the effect is extremely powerful onstage, particularly when it raises up complex social and ethnic issues, the different characters can be hard to keep straight on paper. This play works far better in performance than it does in print, but it remains a valuable teaching tool for both Brecht and World Theatre studies.

"Cloud Nine" an okay book.:
Caryl Churchill's "Cloud Nine" is an okay book. It has some parts that are a little bit offensive, but most of the stuff I have heard before. It is apparent that the book was written in a different style than most plays. I would not have necessarily read this book unless I had to for a class, but once I read it I found out it was okay.