Product Description

Cloud Nine is an inventive, surrealistic and entertaining look at sexual repression and sexual role conditioning.
The first act takes placei n Victorian Africa, suggeting the parallel between colonial and sexual repression. Clive, the whtie man, imposes his ideals on his family and the natives. Betty, his wife, is played by a man because she wants to be what men want her to be; and Joshua, their black servant, is played by a white man because he wants to be what whites want him to be.
The second act is set in London in 1979--in the changing sexuality of our own time. The characters, who have ages only twenty-five years, have become more real to themselves, men suffer as well as women, and our identities are warped by conforming to "unnatural norms".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #969843 in Books
• Published on: 1985-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 68 pages

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.

Brown Daily Herald
"...the play offered an interesting commentary on prescribed notions of gender and sexuality...."

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.