This Is a Chair

“Churchill, who constantly reinvents dramatic form, has come up with something compelling and strange: an intimate revue about the increasing surreality of modern life.” –Guardian

“Puts one in mid of the painter Magritte…Each brief scene is preceded by doomy, tabloid television ‘news music’, and a graphic announcing some heavy topical subject – The War in Bosnia, for instance, or the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Then the performers… play a scene that has nothing to do with its title…The piece creates a haunting impression of urban alienation, self-obsession and pre-millennial tension” –Daily Telegraph

This is a Chair is an experimental short play by Caryl Churchill in which heavy topical news bulletins are each followed by a scene that has nothing to do with the news announcement. This one-act play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the 1997 London International Festival of Theatre.

Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.