A Number by Caryl Churchill
I love reading a script that makes me want to direct it, because the act of reading becomes so much more intense than it is when reading a script that is merely interesting because of its ideas, characters, structure, or story. Some of Caryl Churchill's plays, much as I find them intellectually engaging, don't appeal to my inner director, but some of her recent short plays, such as Far Away and A Number , are so spare and enigmatic that reading and (inevitably) rereading them provokes the imaginative concentration required when directing, and does so more than most other scripts I know. A Number is a science fiction play, just as Far Away and the earlier Skriker are fantasy plays. Except in the theatre world there are only such things as plays, and nobody much bothers worrying about what to call them or their writers. (How odd it would be to hear someone describe Churchill, or anyone else, as "the famous sci-fi playwright"!) Cloning is the ostensible subject o...
