For this module we saw Churchill’s A Number in the Bridge Theatre. In this play we can see some recurrent characteristics of her work, and as we saw the production I can also take some ideas for the direction of my piece.

We can see in A Number that she proposes a disturbing father-son relationship, emphasizing that the father didn’t love his son and got rid of him to make a clone of him afterwards. Churchill exposes the idea of cloning as something scary that threatens identity, as the father in the story made a copy of his son after sending him away and now, 35 years later they have realized there are more clones of him. Actually there are many of them and they all were made illegally.

Churchill responds with this play to the scientific discoveries done at the end of the last century that allowed cloning, as some big mammals were genetically copied at that time, and even if human cloning is illegal she explores what could happen if people were cloned. As always, she takes disturbing family relationships as starting point to send a broader message about our world.

Direction:

• There are only two characters in this play a father and three of his sons, two of whom are clones. Polly Findlay directed Roger Allam as the father and Colin Morgan as the three sons. Thus, one of the actors played multiple characters.
• There was a blackout between the scenes, which lasted for few minutes while the stage was changed.
• The stage was circular and it turned around with every blackout.
• Surprisingly naturalistic stage design.
• Not heavy emotional performance or atmosphere – in contrast with the dramatic and horrible subject of cloning.
• Divided in scenes instead of acts.