About the work
Caryl Churchill's „Cloud Nine" was premiered at the Joint Stock Theatre Company London in 1979 and is one of her most-performed works. The play is a key text of British feminist theatre and known for its radical formal innovations: the first act takes place in colonial Africa around 1880, the second in present-day London — but the same actors play different characters, often across gender and race lines.
Plot
Act I: Africa, around 1880. The British colonial officer Clive lives with his wife Betty (played by a man), his children Edward (played by a woman) and Victoria (a doll), the Black servant Joshua (played by a white man) and his mother-in-law Maud. The colonial idyll is undermined by hidden desires: Betty loves the explorer Harry; Harry sleeps with Joshua and the boy Edward; Clive seduces the visiting widow Mrs Saunders. The act ends in violent rebellion of the colonised — Joshua shoots at Clive. Act II: London, 1979. The same actors play new characters. Betty, now older and divorced, lives in London. Her now adult daughter Victoria is in a lesbian relationship with Lin; her gay son Edward lives with his lover Gerry. The act explores polyamorous relationships, female sexual agency, gay identity. In the closing scene the old Betty meets her younger self from Act I and embraces her — the long path to female self-discovery is symbolised.
Cultural significance
Cloud Nine is regarded as a key text of feminist theatre. The radical cross-gender and cross-racial casting was style-forming for political theatre. The play is one of the most-performed Churchill works and required reading in gender studies programmes. Productions by Max Stafford-Clark, Tom Cairns and Lisa Peterson are reference stagings.