Words on Plays Vol. XXI, No. 7Nirmala Nataraj Editor

Elizabeth Brodersen Director of Education & Community Programs

Michael Paller Resident Dramaturg

Beatrice Basso Dramaturg, Director of New Work

Shannon Stockwell Publications Associate

Anna Woodruff Publications Fellow

Allie Moss Artistic Fellow

by Caryl ChurchillDirected by Casey Stangl

The Strand TheaterJune 3–August 9, 2015

Love and Information

A M E R I C A N CO N S E RVATO RY T H E AT E R

Carey Perloff, Artistic Director

P R E S E N TS

© 2015 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Made possible byDeloitte, The Kimball Foundation, National Corporate Theatre Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, The Sato Foundation, and The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation

1 Overview of Love and Information

5 Beyond the Concerns of the Zeitgeist The Enduring Mystique of Caryl Churchill by Nirmala Nataraj

12 Caryl Churchill on Her Plays

15 Revealing a Spectrum of Humanity An Interview with Director Casey Stangl by Beatrice Basso

20 The People of the City An Interview with Costume Designer Jessie Amoroso by Shannon Stockwell

25 A Place to Congregate An Interview with Scenic Designer Robert Brill By Nirmala Nataraj

29 Information about Information by Shannon Stockwell

32 “It Doesn’t Hurt to Know” Annotations of Selected Scenes from Love and Information by Nirmala Nataraj and Anna Woodruff

40 Questions to Consider / For Further Information . . .

Table of Contents

COVER DNA, by Mushii (2008); wires, by Paolo Margari (2009); Thor’s

Helmet nebula, by Jschulman555 (2008); lab, by University of Michigan

School of Natural Resources & Environment (2012); computer keyboard,

by Stephen D. (2009); snail, by Manjeshpv (2012); circuit board, by Tom

Held (2009); and MRI of brain, by stuartpilbrow (2008). All other photos

by costume designer Jessie Amoroso (2015). Design by Shannon

Stockwell.

OPPOSITE San Francisco at night. Photo by Chris Chabot, 2013.

LED screen in the lobby of A.C.T.’s new Strand Theater. Photo by Denys Baker.

Overview of Love and Information Love and Information premiered in London in September 2012 at the Royal Court Theatre. The production was directed by James Macdonald, who also directed the U.S. premiere in 2014 at New York Theatre Workshop. A.C.T.’s production is the play’s West Coast premiere and the inaugural production in The Strand Theater.

Creative TeamScenic Designer ............................................ Robert BrillCostume Designer ......................................... Jessie AmorosoLighting Designer ......................................... Lap Chi ChuSound Designer ............................................. C. Andrew MayerProjection Designer ....................................... Micah J. Stieglitz

Cast Joel BernardAnthony FuscoCindy GoldfieldDan HiattJoe HoltRafael JordanChristina LiangSharon LockwoodLeo MarksDominique SalernoMia TaganoShona Tucker

SynopsisLove and Information is a collection of 57 short, episodic vignettes in which playwright Caryl Churchill uses a series of interactions between mostly unnamed characters to explore knowledge, meaning, and how we make sense of information in our lives.

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All of the scenes are dialogues between two characters, except for “Piano” and “Recluse,” which feature three characters; “Wedding Video,” which features a group of characters; and a series of optional scenes included at the end of the script. Each vignette is self-contained and, with the exception of a series of one-line scenes titled “Depression,” characters are not repeated from one scene to the next, meaning that the dozen actors are responsible for playing multiple roles. Some of the scenes last for only five seconds, and none are longer than five minutes. In Churchill’s script itself, each vignette has a title that sums up its major themes and content.

The scenes have been grouped into seven sections; according to director James Macdonald, a frequent Churchill collaborator who staged Love and Information for the play’s London and New York premieres, “Broadly, the play starts out being about [people wanting] information, and then moves into how we retain information and what that means. It goes on into the meaning we ascribe to the information we have retained.” While Churchill’s directive is that the sections be enacted in numerical order, the vignettes within each section can change at the director’s discretion. Because Churchill does not include stage directions or character descriptions in Love and Information, the artistic team is tasked with filling in the blanks and creating the world of the play according to the production’s specific needs and intentions.

Love and Information presents a panoply of stories and perspectives that leave much to the audience’s imagination. Although the episodes are bound to create a cumulative effect in the mind of the viewer, the play does not feature an overall narrative arc or continuous plot. This ensures that each individual’s response to the play will be distinct, and perhaps, specific to his or her own experience.

Churchill’s scenes are snapshots of the ways in which we seek, filter, process, dismiss, and question information—and how this affects our ability to make meaningful connections with each other. Indeed, a viewer’s process of making sense of the play may underline the point that Churchill is attempting to make. As she has said, “I don’t set out to find a bizarre way of writing. I certainly don’t think that you have to force it. But, on the whole . . . I enjoy finding the form that seems to best fit what I’m thinking about.”

A Selection of ScenesThe script of Love and Information does not indicate who the characters are or who is speaking at any given moment, although the inference is that characters are alternating lines (at least in the scenes that feature only two characters).

“Secret”

Opening lines: Please please tell menoplease because I’ll never

Scene: One person attempts to get another to reveal a big secret.

“Mother”

Opening lines: While Mom’s outwhat?I’ve something to tell you

Scene: An older sister presents a startling truth to her sibling.

“Grass”

Opening lines: What did you do that for?I thoughtWhat do you think’s going to happen to you?

Scene: Much to the chagrin of their significant other, a person gives the police an anonymous tip about a criminal.

“Spies”

Opening lines: So we went to war on a completelyyes, but how were they to knowthey did know, they knew, he’d already said it wasn’t true

Scene: Two people argue about the impetus behind the war in Iraq.

Director Casey Stangl works with actors in rehearsal for Love and Information. Photo by Anna

Woodruff, 2015.

“Recluse” (featuring three characters)

Opening lines: Don’t answerit’s onlylook through the spyhole

Scene: A man named Mr. Bradshaw is forced by a journalist camped outside his door to invent an absurd story in response to an interrogation.

“God’s Voice”

Opening lines: God told you to do it?He did, yes.How?

Scene: A character explains their experience of communicating with God.

“Climate”

Opening lines: I’m frightened.Just walk instead of driving and don’t take so many hot baths.I’m frightened for the children.

Scene: Two characters discuss their fears about climate change.

Collaborative rehearsal collage compiled by costume designer Jessie Amoroso, dramaturg Beatrice

Basso, actor Anthony Fusco, and assistant director Allie Moss.

Beyond the Concerns of the ZeitgeistThe Enduring Mystique of Caryl Churchill

By Nirmala Nataraj

Caryl always manages to have her pulse on the moral, social, and political issues that are current in our society. She is and has consistently been throughout her career, a formal adventurer in terms of her theatrical language, so that she’s constantly challenging not just literally the language in which theatre is spoken, but also the context, the theatricality and the dramatic landscape in which she works. In that sense she is one of the great innovators of post-war British drama.

—Stephen Daldry, artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, 1992–98

Caryl Churchill is perhaps the most acclaimed female playwright in the English-speaking world, and simultaneously the most elusive. Critic Charles Spencer has called her the “least predictable of contemporary playwrights.” Her work has been described as elliptical, provocative, shocking, confounding—and, over the years, it has become significantly more pared down, devoid of stage directions or notes, which only seems to contribute to her enduring mystique.

Although Churchill has been writing plays for over five decades, she stopped giving interviews many years ago. She rarely comments on critics’ analyses of her work, but her past interviews and the words of her close collaborators, of whom there are many, continue to spark the imaginations of those who recognize the multiple ways in which she has pushed dramatic boundaries over the course of her career.

The Works of Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill was born in London on September 3, 1938, and grew up in both the Lake District of Northwest England and in Montreal, Canada. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University, where she wrote her first play, Downstairs; it was staged in 1958 and honored with an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. Churchill married barrister David Harter in 1961 and wrote many of her early plays when her sons were young. These were mostly radio plays for the BBC, including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967), and Abortive (1971). Her radio play

The Judge’s Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972, while Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London that same year.

Churchill has described her early plays as “depressed plays about depression,” inspired by personal frustrations. In an interview, she said:

I didn’t like being a barrister’s wife and going out to dinner with other professional people and dealing with middle class life. It seemed claustrophobic. Having started off with undefined idealistic assumptions about the kind of life we could lead, we had drifted into something quite conventional and middle class and boring. By the mid 1960s I had this gloomy feeling that when the Revolution came I would be swept away.

Aspects of Churchill’s personal life frequently infused her early plays. Owners, an excoriation of capitalist aggression (which would be an overarching theme in such plays as Serious Money and Top Girls), also asks larger questions about pregnancy and motherhood; in the play, a baby becomes the center of a violent power struggle between the characters and a symbol for the traps in which they find themselves. In an interview, Churchill revealed that she had written the play in three days after what she describes as a “particularly gruesome” miscarriage.

Churchill was resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974–75 and spent a good portion of the following 20 years working with Joint Stock Theatre Company and Monstrous Regiment, performance collectives that shared a collaborative ethos. Churchill’s major work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983), and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan.

In 1982, Churchill’s most celebrated play, Top Girls, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre and directed by Max Stafford-Clark, the cofounder of Joint Stock. The play tells the story of Marlene, the career-driven managing director of Top Girls Employment Agency. The first act features a surreal dinner party with Marlene and five historical and fictional female characters who offer their opinions about everything from maternity to ambition; the second act shows us Marlene’s life in the executive suite and her strained relationship with her sister and niece; the final act, which takes place a year before the second act, reveals that Marlene’s niece is actually her daughter. Top Girls is a scathing critique of Margaret Thatcher–era politics, which celebrated individualistic personal achievement and the acquisition of wealth and power at any cost. In order to be successful, Marlene abandons her illegitimate daughter and even coaxes her female clients to adopt masculine traits, which suggests that her assumption of an oppressor role is connected to a brand of feminism that merely perpetuates patriarchy. The New York Times lauded the play as “a blistering yet sympathetic look at women who achieve success by adopting the worst traits of self-made men.”

Churchill’s next play, Serious Money, a satire about the British stock market written primarily in rhyming couplets, was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence

Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. Churchill’s celebrated later plays include Mad Forest (1990), a drama based on the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which she penned after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994), the tale of an ancient, shapeshifting fairy who befriends and manipulates two teenage mothers.

According to her collaborators, Churchill’s later plays are epic-scale meditations rooted in personal concerns, although this may not be immediately obvious. In Far Away (2000), a dystopian drama about war and violence, a garish parade of condemned prisoners dressed in ostentatious hats takes the stage. Artistic director of New York

Stage Plays by Caryl Churchill

2012: Love and Information; Ding Dong the Wicked2009: Seven Jewish Children2008: Bliss (by Olivier Choiniére), translator2006: Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?2005: A Dream Play, new version of August Strindberg’s play2002: A Number2000: Far Away1997: This Is A Chair, Hotel, Blue Heart (consisting of two one-

act plays: Heart’s Desire and

Blue Kettle)

1994: The Skriker; Thyestes (by Seneca), translator1991: Lives of the Great Poisoners1990: Mad Forest: A Play from Romania1989: Ice Cream1987: Serious Money1986: A Mouthful of Birds, with David Lan1984: Softcops1983: Fen1982: Top Girls1980: Three More Sleepless Nights1979: Cloud Nine1977: Traps1976: Light Shining in Buckinghamshire; Vinegar Tom1975: Objections to Sex and Violence1972: Owners

Caryl Churchill’s Awards

2002: OBIE Sustained Achievement Award1988: OBIE Award for Best New American Play, Serious Money 1987: Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, Serious Money1987: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Serious Money1987: Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year, Serious Money1984: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fen1983: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Top Girls, runner-up1983: OBIE Award for Playwriting, Top Girls1982: OBIE Award for Playwriting, Cloud Nine1961: Richard Hillary Memorial Prize1958: Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival Award, Downstairs

Theatre Workshop James C. Nicola says, “I couldn’t help but look at the play as a response to Caryl’s dealing with her love of her grandchildren and thinking, ‘What do I say to them about this horrific world that we live in, and how can I prepare them for it without frightening or intimidating them?’”

Churchill also wrote a translation of Thyestes (2001), by the ancient Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca, and her version of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (2005) premiered at London’s National Theatre. Love and Information premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012, under the direction of her frequent collaborator James Macdonald. Playwright April de Angelis notes that this enigmatic play is a disquisition on two of the most powerful human themes: needing to know and needing to love. She writes:

It is also the work of a great artist, a late work, so in some way it is a reflection on all that has preceded it. In “Climate,” a voice states: “I’m frightened for the children,” and later: “It’s whether they drown or starve or get killed in the fight for water.” Here is a writer who can convey with simplicity and directness such a terrible fear. Is this the information you want? Here it is. Can you live with it?

Love and Collaboration

Although Churchill may remain an enigma to critics and fans, she is held in high regard by actors and directors, and ever since her early plays, she has workshopped her ideas with a number of people present in the room. For Churchill, 1976 was a watershed year, as it marked the beginning of her long-term collaborations with Joint Stock (which helped generate Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) and Monstrous Regiment (which supported the development of Vinegar Tom). Both Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment figured prominently among the alternative theater groups of the 1970s and offered many artists seminal opportunities for collaborative theater-making.

According to Joint Stock archivist Rob Ritchie, few playwrights are enthusiastic about writing under the constant scrutiny of actors and directors, but Churchill was attracted to the idea, saying, “I’d always been shy about showing anyone my work before it was finished, but I liked being more open and learnt enormously from it.” In fact, many critics have insisted that her willingness to continue developing her work in a collective creative process contributed to her continued success and freed her from redundancy or diminished relevance throughout her career.

Working with a group of actors has continued to aid Churchill in expanding her repertoire of creative techniques. She says that before workshopping Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, she had never seen a theater exercise or improvisation, and was “as thrilled as a child at a pantomime.” She recalls that the performers “drew cards, one of which meant you were eccentric to the power of that number, and then improvised a public place—a department store, a doctor’s waiting room—till it gradually became clear who it was, how they were breaking conventions, how the others reacted.”

The antiauthoritarian structure of sharing thoughts and research with a group of collaborators was the perfect framework for shaping and furthering Churchill’s major themes, which were already heavily influenced by feminism and socialism. Her work is demarcated by a clear political impulse: bringing to life the stories of marginalized men and women situated in a damaged and damaging economy of capitalism. Her sense of responsibility to her audience is paramount, and this is reflected in her writing process:

“If you’re working by yourself, then you’re not accountable to anyone but yourself while you’re doing it. You don’t get forced in quite the same way into seeing how your own inner feelings connect up with larger things that happen to other people.”

Selected Plays by Caryl Churchill

Owners (1972)Marion, an ambitious female real-estate agent, is at the center of this play about the various things one can own—property, children, and even one’s own life.

Vinegar Tom (1976)Set in the seventeenth century, this play with music is as much about modern-day patriarchy and the oppression of women as it is about witch hunting.

Cloud Nine (1979)In this satirical farce, an English family struggles to fit into the strict gender roles of the Victorian era; in modern-day England, the same characters begin to liberate themselves from those repressive roles. Cross-gender and cross-racial casting underlines this critique of sexual and racial politics.

Top Girls (1982)Marlene celebrates her promotion at the Top Girls Employment Agency, but her ruthless, business-oriented attitude has left her family behind. Inspired by the politics of Margaret Thatcher, this play considers capitalism’s effect on feminism.

Mad Forest: A Play from Romania (1990)The Romanian news media has agreed upon an interpretation of the bloody revolution of 1989, but this version of events leaves the characters to struggle with significant questions that are left unanswered.

The Skriker (1994)The Skriker, a shapeshifter and omen of death in British folklore, pursues two teenage mothers in this linguistically complex fairy tale about humanity’s damaging impact on the environment and each other.

Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006)This sparse play tells the story of the intense, complex, decidedly one-sided, and borderline-abusive relationship between Sam and Guy. Sam, who is the embodiment of America, shares various secrets of foreign policy with Guy; Guy is initially eager to listen, but becomes disturbed after learning some sickening details.

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Although Churchill has been described as self-effacing, she has a clear sense of ownership over the words that are ultimately written. While she works with actors extensively throughout the creative process, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that she advocates making every decision collectively; all of her writing is done outside of rehearsal time. She explains:

There’s a misconception sometimes that the actual writing process becomes collaborative. I do have a precise verbal sense that means that, though in some ways I’ll be extremely open in rehearsal—if someone says can we move this speech to the end, I’ll say oh fine let’s try moving the speech to the end and see what happens, or someone will say oh look we could cut from here to here and I say oh great it’ll make sense, let’s cut, and feel very free—other times I will find myself being incredibly persnickety and saying, “Look, you’re saying, ‘Well,’ and there isn’t one,” or “You’ve got a word wrong.” For me it actually throws out the whole rhythm and point of the line. At that point I can be very uncompromising.

Form Fitting Function: Churchill and the Language of Theater

Feminist and socialist politics are important facets of Churchill’s plays, as her work challenges the oppressions and repressions of gender, class, sex, and race—but her bold stylization is an equally prominent feature of her writing. The fact that her work ranges from epic Brechtian dramas to surreal “anti-plays” to disconnected slice-of-life episodes is part and parcel of what makes it difficult to define Churchill’s style. Stafford-Clark describes her as a structuralist at heart. Flashbacks, twisted chronologies, overlapping dialogue, contradiction, tautology, repetition of word and gesture, and different actors playing the same character in different scenes are just some of the devices Churchill has employed in her plays.

German playwright and dramaturg Marius von Mayenburg writes, “Caryl Churchill has changed the language of theatre and very few playwrights do that.” Benedict Nightingale of the Times of London concurs, saying that Churchill is neither a preacher nor a propagandist, and “her mind is as wide ranging and unpredictable as her creative genius.”

Indeed, given the scope of Churchill’s experimentation (with form as well as process), many critics have noted that answering the question “What is a Caryl Churchill play?” leaves most people scratching their heads in puzzlement. De Angelis says, “She has turned the idea of what a play should be over and over, revisioning it beyond the accepted imaginative boundaries, to produce plays that are always revolutionary.” For example, in Heart’s Desire (the first act of Churchill’s play Blue Heart, 1997, often performed as a stand-alone), the play “resets” itself constantly and audiences witness 25 distinct “rewindings” in addition to unusual entrances, including that of a ten-foot bird and a gaggle of schoolchildren. In Blue Kettle (the second act of Blue Heart), which features a young man who poses as the long-lost son of several different women, a virus leads to the deterioration of language; certain words are replaced by either the word

“blue” or “kettle,” until the play gives way to chaos and the sense that language can never

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accurately communicate our emotions or help us make sense of our lives. In destabilizing language, Churchill destabilizes the notion of a conventional, authoritative narrative.

Several of Churchill’s scripts notate scenes with overlapping dialogue; this signals two or more people talking at once, which upsets the more common theatrical device of linear communication and cogent dialogue. Even before Churchill began writing stage plays, her reputation for this tactic was well known. In her radio play Identical Twins (1968), the title characters were played by a single actor, Kenneth Haigh, whose speeches needed to overlap. In the decades before digital editing, Churchill’s play called upon the most skilled technicians in broadcasting. Haigh recorded the second speech at the same time that the first was being played back, but it turned out that keeping pace with his own voice was difficult to sustain for more than 30 or 40 seconds at a time, so the play was pieced together in small takes. Vocal counterpoint would be a technique that Churchill perpetuated in many of her future plays, and when she tested the idea with her publisher of more than 40 years, Nick Hern, he wondered aloud, “Oh, my God, how are we going to do that?” She created a standard way of laying out plays with overlapping speech through a series of forward slashes, asterisks, and other symbols to guide actors and directors in bringing a cacophony of words to life. It is a radical departure from traditional dialogue and continues to be adopted by contemporary playwrights. (Interestingly, Churchill’s recent works are spare, with very few stage directions.)

As eager as they are to be heard, Churchill’s characters themselves are often less “talky” (preferring to justify their existence not with long soliloquies but with frenetic activity) and less obviously categorizable as villains or protagonists than those of other playwrights, says Hern. Actor Maxine Peake, who played the title role in The Skriker in 2014 at London’s Royal Exchange Theatre, describes Churchill’s characters as “coming more from a physical impulse rather than a cerebral one.”

Churchill and her collaborators are often surprised by the plays that emerge from her imagination. Hern says, “The plays just turn up, without warning. I think she’s one of those shamanistic writers, in the way Harold Pinter was. A play isn’t planned or premeditated; it’s scratching an itch. They come to me and I sit down to read them, having absolutely no idea what the length or subject matter or form will be.”

De Angelis believes that Churchill is an inspiration to all artists who may wish to be more adventurous and experimental: “Many writers have their time, their decade when their voice matches the concerns of the Zeitgeist. She’s not like that. She’s never stood still.”

SOURCES April de Angelis, “Caryl Churchill: Changing the Language of Theatre,” The Guardian (September 7, 2012), http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/sep/07/caryl-churchill-landmark-theatre; Elaine Aston and Elin Diamond, The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); R. Darren Gobert, ed., The Theatre of Caryl Churchill (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014); Sarah Hemming, “Limelight? Yes and No,” Financial Times (April 11/12, 2015); Mark Lawson, “Caryl Churchill, by the People Who Know Her Best,” The Guardian (October 3, 2014), http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/03/caryl-churchill-collaborators-interview; Sarah Lyall, “The Mysteries of Caryl Churchill,” The New York Times (December 5, 2004)

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Caryl Churchill on Her PlaysThe role of the playwright is not to give answers but to ask questions. We need to find new questions, which may help us answer the old ones or make them unimportant, and this means new subjects and new forms.

—From an essay entitled “Not Ordinary, Not Safe: A Direction for Drama?” 1960

For years and years I thought of myself as a writer before I thought of myself as a woman, but recently I’ve found that I would say I was a feminist writer as opposed to other people saying I was. I’ve found that as I go out more into the world and get into situations which involve women what I feel quite strongly is a feminist position and that inevitably comes into what I write.

—Interview with Ann McFerran, Time Out, October 28, 1977

[I know] quite well what kind of society I would like: decentralized, nonauthoritarian, communist, nonsexist—a society in which people can be in touch with their feelings, and in control of their lives. But it always sounds both ridiculous and unattainable when you put it into words.

—Interview with Judith Thurman, Ms., May 1982

It’s almost impossible not to take [a moral and political stance], whether you intend to or not. Most plays can be looked at from a political perspective and have said something, even if it isn’t what you set out to say. If you wrote a West End comedy relying on conventional sexist jokes, that’s taking a moral and political stance, though the person who wrote it might say, “I was just writing an entertaining show.” Whatever you do your point of view is going to show somewhere. It usually only gets noticed and called “political” if it’s against the status quo. There are times when I feel I want to deal with immediate issues and times when I don’t. I do like the stuff of theater, in the same way people who are painting like paint; and of course when you say “moral and political” that doesn’t have to imply reaching people logically or overtly, because theater can reach people on all kinds of other levels too. Sometimes one side or the other is going to have more weight. Sometimes it’s going to be about images, more like a dream to people, and sometimes it’s going to be more like reading an article. And there’s room for all that. But either way, the issues you feel strongly about are going to come through, and they’re going to be a moral and political stance in some form.

—Interview with Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig, Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, 1987

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I thought, “Wait a minute, my whole concept of what plays might be is from plays written by men. I don’t have to put on a wig, speak in a special voice, but how far do I assume things that have been defined by men?” There isn’t a simple answer to that. And I remember long before that thinking of the “maleness” of the traditional structure of plays with conflict and building in a certain way to a climax. But it’s not something I think about very often. Playwriting will change not just because more women are doing it but because more women are doing other things as well. And of course men will be influenced by that too.

—Interview with Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig, Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, 1987

I enjoy finding the form that seems best to fit what I’m talking about. I don’t set out to find a bizarre way of writing. I certainly don’t think that you have to force it. But, on the whole, I enjoy plays that are non-naturalistic and don’t move at real time.

—Interview with Jackie Kay, New Statesman and Society, April 21, 1989

I don’t feel possessive about what the characters should be like. It’s nice not knowing what to expect. I think I’m very susceptible to performers, to falling in love with what I see them do with my plays.

—Interview with Judith Mackrel, The Independent, January 20, 1994

James Macdonald and Caryl Churchill in rehearsal for the Royal Court Theatre’s production of Love

and Information. Photo by Stephen Cummiskey, 2012.

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A Structure All Her Own

Love and Information and the Vignette Tradition

Caryl Churchill’s work has always defied easy classification, and Love and Information is no exception. Its short, nonlinear scenes fall into the genre of vignette theater, but its structural quirks ultimately render it unique.

Vignette theater grew out of the American vaudeville and British music-hall traditions of short, stand-alone skits, songs, and other performance routines. Like Love and Information, contemporary vignette theater is characterized by brief, isolated scenes. For instance, in John Cariani’s contemporary Almost, Maine (2004) and prominent theatrical adaptations of Edgar Lee Masters’s classic Spoon River Anthology (1915), the characters all hail from the same town and, taken together, their vignettes present a snapshot of life in a particular place. Cariani’s work comprises short duets, with a quirky perspective on love, that all occur over the course of one cold night in the same fictional town in Maine; adaptations of Spoon River are series of monologues performed by residents of the titular turn-of-the-twentieth-century town, from beyond the grave. Conversely, in works such as Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (1897), the setting shifts but the scenes remain connected by the characters. Schnitzler’s play is structured as ten exchanges between two people; in each scene, one character can be recognized from the previous scene while the other character stays onstage for the next scene, until the circle of connectivity is complete. Love and Information, in contrast, uses neither device, instead allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about the connections (or lack thereof) between the scenes.

These divergences from traditional vignette theater point to Love and Information’s structural ties to surreal theater, or Theatre of the Absurd. Often associated with the work of Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, and Jean Genet, Theatre of the Absurd is known for breaking established dramatic conventions. It is characterized by fragmented language, clown-like characters, circumstances that are simultaneously comic and tragic, nonlinear plots without neat resolutions, a lack of recognizable settings, deliberate audience alienation, and an often-futile search for “meaning.” While Love and Information does not fall neatly into this category either (Churchill’s language is incredibly precise and cannot be described as fragmented; her characters are strongly grounded in reality and are not clowns), the plot structure, the quest for human connection, and the expectation that the audience will decide what the play ultimately means can be seen as exponents of Theatre of the Absurd. However, Love and Information cannot ultimately be contained in a single genre; as she often does, Churchill disregards convention to create her own unique structure that is specifically suited to the subject of her work.

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Revealing a Spectrum of HumanityAn Interview with Director Casey Stangl

By Beatrice Basso

Director Casey Stangl returns to A.C.T. after staging David Ives’s Venus in Fur last spring. That production was packed with intense, edgily comic exchanges about sexual politics, generating plenty of heat with its unexpected plot twists. Now, Stangl brings her talent for seamless transitions and precise pacing to Love and Information, a play that offered her a blank creative canvas that she describes as simultaneously “exhilarating and terrifying.”

Stangl’s early years as a director were spent in San Francisco, particularly at the Eureka Theatre. Among the plays she experienced while in the city was a production of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, which had its West Coast premiere at the Eureka and then moved to the Curran Theatre. Coincidentally, the first job Stangl was offered after she became a full-time freelance director was the opportunity to stage Top Girls at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She says she was awed to discover an elasticity in Churchill’s language that made the play relevant and provocative nearly two decades after its premiere.

Stangl found her stride in directing new work and reactivating classics through a bold contemporary lens. The director’s recent projects include The Curse of Oedipus for The Antaeus Company; Venus in Fur and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane for South Coast Repertory; First Person: Seeing America, a multimedia piece with Ensemble Galilei; and Lombardi, a coproduction with Cleveland Play House and Arizona Theatre Company. Stangl’s production of Peace in Our Time at The Antaeus Company won the 2012 Ovation Award and the L.A. Weekly Theater Award for Best Production. Nationally, Stangl’s work has been seen at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Portland Stage, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Fort Worth Opera, and many others. Stangl was the artistic director of Eye of the Storm Theatre in Minneapolis, for which she was named Minnesota Artist of the Year in 2003.

At a new-play festival in Southern California a week before rehearsals began, Stangl was happy to talk about the themes and ideas that have piqued her imagination, what it’s been like to include the specific communities of San Francisco in Churchill’s scenes, and whether the gap between love and information is truly as wide as it may seem.

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How did you react when A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff asked you to direct Love and Information?

I was thrilled. I had seen on the A.C.T. website that it was happening and that there was no director yet, and when I got a voicemail from Carey, I thought, “I hope that’s what it’s about!” Carey described the play, which is made up of disparate scenes with no common characters. Then she talked about it being the first production at The Strand Theater, which is located in San Francisco at a kind of crossroads between various communities—from homeless people to tourists to tech workers to government workers to immigrant mom-and-pop store owners. She felt that Love and Information was the perfect play with which to open this new space.

What were your first impressions of the play?

Carey told me, “The play is wide open; it’s a director’s piece, and you can really do anything you want with it.” When you open the script to the first scene, there are just lines and no character names or stage directions. I remember thinking, “Wow, she wasn’t kidding—this is wide open.” When you have that amount of choice, you can do anything, but it also means you have to find a container and a way into the play. With most plays, the container is already built for you, so this will be an interesting challenge.

You were already familiar with Caryl Churchill’s work when you came to Love and Information; you directed Top Girls for the Guthrie Theater over a decade ago.

They are very different plays, but they share some commonalities; for instance, Churchill’s ability to manipulate language, to write characters and scenes in which so much is happening below the words, is important in both works. Love and Information is so striking because these scenes range from a quarter of a page to three pages, but despite such a small amount of dialogue, you can pull back the curtain and imagine what’s happening between these characters. This momentary illumination of someone’s life is thrilling to be able to evoke. Churchill has a keen sense of the need for humans to connect with each other and to our past, present, and future, as well as how technology threatens that. But she also sees great poignancy in humanity’s stubborn need to connect

Director Casey Stangl. Photo by Ann Marsden.

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and form relationships with each other, which is hard-wired into our DNA. Churchill has a very unflinching, unsentimental view of life, but there’s so much hope and humanity and joy in her perspective, as well.

You’ve spoken about the theatrical possibilities of the play, given the open-ended nature of the script, but there is also the potential for “truth” in the acting.

I think the scenes themselves require a very natural delivery from the actors. The play is not theatrical in the sense of there being strange movements or an odd, overblown acting style; the characters are very real and totally recognizable. However, the unusual structure of all these different scenes and the fact that there are no common characters or narrative through-lines make the play radical. There is a theatricality in the way each set of scenes gets juxtaposed, as well as in the constant telling of different stories. In this production, we are trying to capitalize on these aspects with a simple presentation of an existing palette of furniture; an actor can put a throw pillow on a bench, and now they’re in a living room. We will use the power of the imagination to bring the audience into the storytelling. We will also evoke and use technology; we’ll have a big video screen on our stage that we will utilize, but not in a way that distances or creates a sense of technology overtaking us. Instead, the video screen will further demonstrate our humanity.

Although this play is very open, it has a few rules. Some scenes are compulsory, and the order of sections in the play is preordained, although the scenes within each section can be moved around. And then, finally, there are some random scenes that a director can choose whether or not to stage.

My understanding is that the random scenes are all supposed to be in the production, but that you can use them anywhere you want. They’re not tied to specific sections. One of these scenes is called “Cold,” and the whole scene is: “(Someone sneezes.)” Our intention is to play with that scene in the lobby before the actual show begins, both on the LED screen and with live actors. One idea I’ve had is that there will be three or four actors in the lobby blending into the crowd, but when one of them sneezes, the other actors also sneeze. The idea is that it’s a chain reaction of sneezing.

The play definitely has a structure. The scenes are all titled, which is quite helpful and gives you a sense of Churchill’s intention. The audience won’t know what those titles are, which helps prevent a bias toward the scene. I don’t want the audience thinking, “Why is this scene called that?” I want them to just enjoy each moment in and of itself. But the titles help point me and the actors in a particular direction.

I do think there are other rules. For example, some of the scenes are clearly comic. Some are clearly serious. There are quite a few that could be played either way, depending on how you interpret them. There is definitely a sensibility to the writing, a subtlety of things left unsaid, a humor that is underplayed. Although there is no overt sentimentality, I think that it’s in there, as well. The more you dig into each scene, a scenario starts to automatically suggest itself.

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How did you know how many actors you wanted?

We latched on to 12 as a number that seemed to give us the best of both worlds. It would give us a lot of people to work with, and it would also ensure that everybody would have a lot to do. I created this big spreadsheet matrix that noted factors such as how many actors are in a scene and how long the scene is. Initially, I imagined a scenario for each scene so that I could have a reference point, although I knew it might change along the way. I imagined my own take on the scenes: What are the ages of the characters? The genders? And what about racial diversity? This helped me wrap my head around what my needs might be. By creating the matrix, I came to the thought that the play really seemed like it wanted to be six men and six women. We also have as much diversity as we could muster in terms of age, gender, skin color, body type, and personality, so that the cast reflects a spectrum of humanity.

Even before rehearsals start, we’ve been asking actors questions about ideas they can bring to the room. How are you envisioning rehearsals?

I’ve reached out to the actors and said to them that if there are any scenes they feel particularly connected to or have a specific take on, they should let me know and then we’ll negotiate that. I also told them, “If you just want to show up on the first day and start from there, that’s fine, too.” I’ve created an initial set of scene assignments and an order, so that we have a place from which to react and start. We’ll probably do a conventional read-through, in order to hear all the scenes out loud. It’ll be interesting because I haven’t yet determined the relationships between the characters in each scene. We’ll just let that happen. Then we’ll do a series of games and exercises in which we choose characters based on particular communities in San Francisco, or we will pair people for half an hour so they can come up with two different ways to do one scene. We will have something of a speed-dating approach, with the actors pairing up in different ways to get to know each other, and to formulate what the scenes are going to be. We already have some structure around each section, and we know what each should represent and emphasize. The video element that we’re planning for the production has necessitated making some decisions about a few scenes that we know we want to include. At the same time, there are plenty of blanks to fill.

Generally, in American theater, directors are asked much more often to guide an audience through a linear, narrative, realistic journey.

Absolutely. I would say there is almost always a story being told, even in plays that have a nonlinear structure, or that bounce around in time. But that’s not what we’re doing here. There’s not one specific story we’re telling; the play has a radical form in which several individual narratives add up to something larger that reveals how we live and what it means to be a human on this planet right now. Because there are so many different themes and ideas, the play will resonate differently with different people.

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As the director, how are you helping audiences become comfortable with this fragmented structure, and how are you encouraging them to trust that the cumulative effect is the point of the play?

They’re going to realize very quickly what the play is doing, even if they come in having no idea what they’re about to see. After the first few scenes, they’ll realize they’re not seeing pieces that are related to each other. It will make some people uncomfortable, and some of them will be entertained. I’m doing a few things to help create a sense of structure, such as displaying numbers on the video screen before each section; this will provide a sense of moving forward through the evening. I’m focusing on setting up ways in which all the different physical realities of each section can unfold. I’m hoping that will feed the audience’s need for narrative but still allow them to enjoy each scene individually.

What do you think makes this play relevant at this particular moment in time?

When somebody originally told me about the play, they said that it was about living in the Digital Age. So before I read it, I really thought that it was about dealing with the era of Facebook and that sort of thing. There are certainly hints of that in the play, but it’s so much bigger and broader than that. Throughout history, there have been large technological leaps—such as the invention of the wheel or the Industrial Revolution—that have radically changed the way people live. With such changes, there have always been predictions that we’re going to lose our humanity. I remember when computers first became ubiquitous, people said, “Soon, no one will ever see each other, and we’ll never leave our homes, and robots will take over everything.” In fact, what happened was a proliferation of coffee shops and other meeting places, so that people could actually come out and connect with each other. Churchill has tapped into the sense that, despite the constancy of dire predictions, humanity prevails. We just find different ways to continue to have this sense of connection.

That’s where I think the title comes from; we’re always seeking love, in whatever form, and the information that we get simultaneously informs and complicates it, while also giving us new ways in which to love each other. When we process love and information, sometimes those two things collide, sometimes they connect, and sometimes they complement each other. With each scene, I find myself asking, “Is this scene about love? Is this scene about information? Or is there a collision between the two?” Those are the kinds of questions I hope audiences will walk away with.

The People of the CityAn Interview with Costume Designer Jessie Amoroso

By Shannon Stockwell

Love and Information is something of an enigma when it comes to design—on the one hand, it is difficult to build the visual world for a script that provides almost no visual details, while on the other, many designers relish the artistic freedom this allows. When we sat down with costume designer Jessie Amoroso a few weeks before rehearsals began, he explained that he didn’t yet have a concrete design. “I’m waiting for the actors to dig in,” he says. “Then we’ll need to get costumes into rehearsal quickly so they can become a part of the action as soon as possible.” Amoroso, who is also A.C.T.’s costume shop director, has encyclopedic knowledge of the company’s stock, which will come in handy, since a majority of the costumes will be discovered during the rehearsal process.

Providing the costumes as quickly as possible is crucial, because, as Amoroso explains, specificity of character is of the utmost importance with such short scenes. “The audience will have only a few seconds to form an opinion about who these characters are,” he says. “In some cases, we might want to reveal where the scene is going through the visual cue of their costumes, and in other cases, we might want the scene to go in a direction that is completely different from what their outfits suggest.”

Amoroso’s designs were previously seen at A.C.T. in Testament in 2014 and Underneath the Lintel in 2013. Love and Information is quite different from those one-person, one-costume plays, and Amoroso tells us that he is looking forward to the challenge.

What has the design process been like so far?

It’s an interesting script in that there are no characters or scene locations. The only real direction Caryl [Churchill] has given us is that the sections of the play must be performed in order. But within those sections, the scenes can be done in any random order. And every scene can be interpreted in a million different ways.

So with that in mind, we realized that the director, the actors, and the designers have to decide who and where these characters are. We read the play with [director] Casey Stangl, and then we looked at each scene and talked about our first reactions. Then, we discussed any deeper meanings we found after looking at a vignette a couple different ways. The design team has had hours of phone meetings in which we closely examine each scene and put our two cents in.

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So the design team read the play out loud with each other?

Yes, we went through it scene by scene with Casey. We all had our own ideas of how many people were in each scene and who the characters might be. For example, there’s one great scene where the characters are trying to translate some Chinese text, and here’s my take: I see a young man with his t-shirt pulled up, and he’s facing the audience. He’s looking over his shoulder and a friend is behind him with a book, and we find out that they’re trying to translate the meaning of a tattoo.

But everyone had a different idea about that scene. We asked, “Is this an angry scene? Is it a happy scene? Who might these people be? What gender are they? It reads like two people, but could it be three or four? Maybe there are three people, and one of them is silent. Maybe it’s one person and they’re just talking to themselves.” Those discussions led us to realize that the actors really need to be a part of the decision-making process.

Production-wise, we know we can’t let everything wait until the actors get into the room because we don’t have a very long rehearsal period, so we need to nail down some circumstances [of character and location] before rehearsals start. We’re going to try and come up with specific circumstances for 20 to 30 percent of the scenes, another 20 to 30 percent will have general parameters, and we will let the actors discover a large number of the scenes during rehearsal.

Have you ever designed a show that called for this kind of process?

Not so much. Usually, I’ll come up with a design and present it at the beginning of a rehearsal period. Then, the actors have a chance to grow accustomed to their clothes, or maybe they’ll realize I’ve gone in a different direction than they wanted and I can adjust the design along the way. But the costumes for Love and Information will change on a day-to-day basis in rehearsal. I’ll try not to spend too much on specific outfits, because they might change. But I definitely want to include some pieces with visual impact.

What do you mean by “visual impact”?

I don’t think we’re going to have full costume changes between each scene, but there may be a few pieces that make a big statement about who a character is and where they are.

“Chinese Poetry”A Scene from Love and Information

“The girl waits at the door of her house on the mountain.”

What it literally says is “mountain girl door.”

So maybe

A girl from the mountain is waiting outside my door. A girl climbs the mountain and comes to a door.

To get the girl you have to go through a door into the mountain.

The mountain is a door only a girl can open.

The girl’s as big as a mountain and cant get through the door.

What’s the next line?

The last plays that you designed for A.C.T. were Testament and Underneath the Lintel. Those were both one-person, one-costume shows. Now you have a 12-person cast and an indeterminate number of costumes. How will you deal with so many pieces of clothing?

The actors will probably wear a lot of neutral tones, and the pieces that really define each character can come on and off easily. And the actors may share some costume pieces. Maybe a coat will stay onstage and get passed from one actor to the other. It could be interesting to see how the same piece of clothing works on two different people.

There will certainly be a good deal of meeting with the actors. I’ve worked with several of them before, so we have a relationship and a shared vocabulary. I’ll try to meet with the new actors for an hour and talk about what kind of shoes they like, if they’re comfortable with quick changes, what kind of jeans they wear, and I’ll see what their own personal wardrobes are. Then I will see where I can pull away from that but still allow them to be physically comfortable.

Are there any children in the cast?

I don’t believe we will have any children in the play, but I think we will have a few younger adults who can play teenagers. In a Caryl Churchill play, it actually wouldn’t be

Market Street in San Francisco. Photo by Thomas Hawk, 2010.

out of the question to have a forty-year-old person playing a five-year-old. We haven’t talked about that, but we’ll definitely look at whether or not that would read as an actual five-year-old character, or as an adult acting like a five-year-old.

Love and Information will be performed in the newly opened Strand Theater. Does that affect the design?

The Strand is the first new theater in San Francisco in a long time. It was previously a movie theater, but it’s been off the market for so long and had such a major remodel that it feels like a brand-new space. Since this is the first show in The Strand, we thought that the audience sitting in this theater should feel like they’re watching the people of San Francisco and of Market Street. Our cast is going to be multicultural and multigenerational, and the looks that are particular to San Francisco will dictate the design.

We [Stangl and the designers] definitely feel like this will be a piece set in San Francisco in spring/summer. Maybe a winter scene will pop up, but I think people will respond to the play as if they are looking at it during the current time and place. Luckily, San Francisco is a spring/fall town when it comes to weather, so it’s not unusual to see one person in flip-flops and someone else in a windbreaker on the same day; that gives me a lot of freedom with the design.

Market Street in San Francisco. Photo by Thomas Hawk, 2010.

Have you done any research in coming up with your design?

I’ve just been going out and looking at the people of Market Street with a finer eye. Working in the neighborhood [A.C.T.’s costume shop is located at 1117 Market Street, between 7th and 8th streets], I see the usual milieu of techies, tourists passing through, people of the streets, and protesters at the Federal Building. For this production, I actually started taking surreptitious photographs in the same spot every day.

What spot is that?

It’s in front of the Twitter offices [1355 Market Street]. I just pretended to be on my phone and constantly took pictures, in order to determine the commonalities among the young tech industry, the middle-aged tech industry, the established tech industry, tourists from around the world, classic San Francisco hipsters, people working in service jobs, and retail workers passing through. I tried to capture a slice of what you see in that neighborhood on a daily basis. I saw a lot of colors and a lot of schlepping—a lot of bags, rolling carts, and suitcases. I also saw a lot of muted tones, and then pops of color. One day I noticed everyone was wearing something yellow. So there might be a scene in which everyone wears something yellow—socks, tennis shoes, a backpack.

How do you plan on using those photographs?

I’ve shared them with Casey, so when I say “older tech executive,” “young artistic hipster,” or “Belgian tourist,” I can refer Casey to a particular photograph. That gives us a common vision, since there won’t be time to render each individual design every time we have an idea. Then I will utilize our stock, take quick trips to the mall or the thrift stores in the Mission, and order things with Amazon Prime two-day delivery.

What kinds of conversations have you had with the other designers?

The set will be able to transition with ease. We will definitely take advantage of the tricks of the trade with projections, movable set pieces, and props that come on and off the stage. Luckily, most of the scenes include only two people at a time, so the other actors can help move things around. Figuring out why these people are onstage together will also help dictate the design. Are they passing by on the street? Are they in the same movie theater? Are they passengers on a plane? How do we get these disparate groups of people together onstage? Of course, these days it doesn’t seem odd to see a man in a three-piece suit chatting with someone who could be homeless or an artist. That kind of interaction feels very relevant to San Francisco.

A Place to CongregateAn Interview with Scenic Designer Robert Brill

By Nirmala Nataraj

Scenic designer Robert Brill, who has created sets for theater, opera, and dance in most of the nation’s major cities over the past three decades, also has an extensive background in architecture. Thus, one of the most rewarding aspects of working on A.C.T.’s production of Love and Information, according to Brill, is being able to work in a new building.

When he first walked into The Strand several months ago, he recalls, “it had no ceiling. I could only imagine what the space was going to look like. Although I saw the renderings provided by the architects, I knew the building would evolve on its journey to a finished state—and the possibilities excited me.”

Brill’s love for a variety of art forms and his passion for creating splashy, statement-making sets is evident in his work. His Broadway credits include a Tony Award nomination for Assassins; set and club design for the critically acclaimed revival of Cabaret at the KitKatKlub and Studio 54; and revivals of numerous plays, including Guys and Dolls (Tony Award nomination for scenic design), The Story of My Life, A Streetcar Named Desire, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His world-premiere projects include the Rat Pack–inspired Robin and the 7 Hoods, which premiered at The Old Globe, and the first opera version of Moby-Dick at The Dallas Opera.

Brill is a founding member of San Diego’s Sledgehammer Theatre, where he helped develop a cinematic aesthetic that allows directors to play with perspectives comparable to a filmmaker’s close-up and long-distance views. Given the designer’s versatility and extensive design vocabulary, Brill, who is a recipient of the 2004 Michael Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration, has been dubbed “Robert Brilliant” by Jack O’Brien, the former artistic director of The Old Globe.

According to director Casey Stangl, Brill’s design blurs the barriers between audience and performance. In a recent conversation, Brill told us that his intention was to create a fluid space in which the actors and audience will recognize the power of community.

When you read Caryl Churchill’s play, what kinds of images and design possibilities came to mind?

Community was central to the creative team’s initial conversations; so were the ways in which we interact with each other and exchange information—verbal and nonverbal,

through media and social media, and even in the ways we interact with art and architecture. The idea of community is central to where The Strand Theater is located, in the middle of San Francisco. The building is a revival of an older presence, but it is also a new presence in the neighborhood. It has history, but it is also very modern on the inside.

What have your conversations with Casey Stangl and the rest of the design team been like?

Sifting through the 57-plus scenes has been an amazing process. Casey opened the floor to a lot of discussion and creative input from the design team. Lap [Chi Chu, lighting], Micah [ J. Stieglitz, projections] and Jessie [Amoroso, costumes] were involved from day one, contributing their thoughts and interpretations of each scene. Each person’s contribution was essential and instrumental in giving meaning and context to the play. The process was truly collaborative.

It was important for us to keep everything fluid and simple. We asked ourselves: Where are we seeing the actors in the scene? Do we feature the actors and disguise the technical elements? The design strategy benefited from a sense of organization, and thankfully, Casey is a master of spreadsheets. Her paperwork was incredibly thorough and has been our guide throughout the creative process. It’s really helped us to consider the context for each scene and to organize the elements of the design.

This is a nonlinear, non-narrative play, and the scenes and characters shift abruptly. Have you worked on similar pieces before?

The process was reminiscent of a piece that I worked on with Sledgehammer Theatre many years ago: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Pre-Paradise Sorry Now. While it was completely different material and subject matter, it too had a structure that allowed for a lot of exploration and interpretation. That piece also offered the opportunity to create scenes that allowed us to switch up gender, location, and other aspects. Both pieces require rigor and flexibility, so having some sort of structure or rubric for the creative process is essential.

What kinds of visual elements can the audience expect?

The visual aesthetic really takes its cue from The Strand’s geometry and interior design. A.C.T. and the architects [Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP] have created an exquisite blend of architecture and public space. The spaces are beautifully realized and proportioned, and those proportions were central to the design. We decided early on to approach the set more like an installation or an extension of the architecture.

The set itself is quite simple. I focused on creating a clean, tailored space. The floor of the stage is a carpeted black surface that is very muted and dense, and not reflective; at the center is a 16-square-foot gray performance area (made of Marley dance flooring) that offers the perfect surface for light. At each side are slender black panels that reach almost full height, up to within a couple feet of the ceiling. Upstage there is a large black

wall featuring a 16-by-17.5-foot rear-projection screen that floats in front of it. The screen is a canvas for video content that will sometimes feature the actors, as well as a whole range of other graphic content. And floating above the stage is an architectural grid that suggests a ceiling without being a solid surface.

How did you create a design that would be versatile enough to hold the worlds of each individual scene?

With so many scenes, the play necessitates a fluid design. We [the design team] asked ourselves a lot of basic questions, like, “What is the focus of each scene?” and “How present is the ensemble/community onstage?” Early on, it was clear that creating a spare and clean environment would allow us to focus on the language and the characters. Some scenes utilize a symbolic prop, and others are presented simply with nothing.

Each of the three panels on the sides of the stage contains a door that the audience can’t really see when it’s closed. There are also entrances downstage left and right, and one upstage. Altogether, in this intimate space, the actors have eight places from which to enter and exit. We’re trying to be rigorous about how we can craft this play so that the scenes cleanly evolve from one to the next. The design features some simple rolling tables and a collection of chairs in the same color; it’s all meant to be light on its feet.

Implicitly, the vast repositories of information accessible to us are a part of this play. Did that figure into your design at all?

Scenic designer Robert Brill’s rendering for A.C.T.’s production of Love and Information

Not really, no. Our discussions always focused on the humanity and the interaction between the characters. Casey kept us mindful of recognizing how the characters and community use and respond to technology, versus focusing on the technology itself.

Can you tell us about the video element of the production and how it influenced your design?

One of the dominant features in The Strand Lobby is a fantastic, large LED screen, and it was one of the first things that sparked the direction of the set design. I’m sometimes reluctant to suggest a screen as a scenic background, but for Love and Information, that surface is objectified—and at times, it’s like having another character onstage. The screen is a floating canvas that delivers surprises.

We were also inspired by something that happened when Times Square was undergoing its renovation in the early 1990s. Many years ago, an artistic team put together a giant yellow wall that said “Everybody.” There were chairs mounted to the wall, as well as a concrete stepped area where people could congregate. That single word was a graphic reminder that suggested this area was a place for community. That same team put together an installation titled 1000 on 42nd Street. They took the construction walls surrounding the area and painted them chartreuse, and then they invited people passing by on the street to be photographed. They created a series of headshots of everyone, then blew them up and mounted them on the walls. Each headshot included a small circle that mentioned the person’s name and what they were doing in that area. This concept was part of our conversation. We want to integrate video and community in a way that isn’t about replicating scenery or suggesting a specific place, but driving home the idea of community.

You have a multifaceted design background that encompasses architecture, graphic design, opera, dance, and Broadway shows. How did this affect your design for Love and Information?

The set for Love and Information has allowed me to work in forms that I love. It’s architecture, it’s very graphic, and it’s a space that allows the other designers to play with lighting, projections, costumes, and sound.

Although it’s fragmented into so many small scenes, Churchill’s play is a large piece.

It’s a large piece in scope, but it’s also intimate—just like The Strand!

Information about InformationBy Shannon Stockwell

Although not every scene in Love and Information is explicitly about technology, the word “information” is inextricably linked to modern culture. In fact, the word has experienced a kind of cultural explosion in the past 50 years. When the word

“information” began its life in the fourteenth century, it meant simply “accusatory or criminal intelligence against a person.” The word comes from a combination of the Latin formare, meaning “to form, shape,” and the prefix in-, meaning “into.” Of course, since its humble beginnings, the word has taken on many different meanings, especially in the past half-century. Recently, the Oxford English Dictionary expanded the entry for

“information” to the length of a small novella. As Michael Proffitt, managing editor of the OED, explained upon releasing the 2010 revision, “This is an old word with a new lease on life.”

Some might argue that the word’s rise is a corollary to the amount of information in the world. There certainly is a lot of it; see the definitions for “information fatigue” (“apathy, indifference, or mental exhaustion arising from exposure to too much information, esp. [in later use] stress induced by the attempt to assimilate excessive amounts of information from the media, the Internet, or at work”) and “information overload” (“exposure to or provision of too much information; a problematic situation or state of mental stress arising from this”). Certainly, our access to information has increased. But as James Gleick argues in The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, we have always been a species obsessed with data and communication, stretching all the way back to the very beginnings of language. So what happened in the past 50 years that transformed this word into such a touchstone of our culture?

The answer lies with Claude Shannon, an unassuming mathematical researcher for Bell Labs. In 1948 he published a paper titled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” It presented the main problem of telecommunications: incapable of independent thought, a machine could not decipher noise (static) from a meaningful message, and thus would transmit both. This meant that the person on the other end of the line would have difficulty determining what exactly the message was conveying in the first place. Shannon posited ways in which a machine could recognize mathematical patterns in a message, and thus could separate the signal from the noise. In his paper, he suggested a unit of measurement for information, which he called the “bit.” This

ushered us into the Information Age—an era in which we are constantly trying to figure out better, clearer, and more immediate ways of staying connected with each other and with the world.

The first recorded use of the term “the information age” was in 1960 by Richard S. Leghorn, the founder and then-president of Itek Corporation. In a book about business and management techniques, he wrote, “Present and anticipated spectacular informational achievements will usher in public recognition of the ‘information age,’ probably under a more symbolic title.” Despite Leghorn’s doubts, the name stuck. It’s easy now to see why; information is truly the dominant economic basis for our current society. We routinely speak of “the information superhighway,” “information warfare,” and “information processing.” Companies collect information from their clients in order to sell their products more effectively. Individuals like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are wanted by authorities for disseminating classified information. The 24-hour news cycle provides a constant stream of information. You can wake up in the middle of the night, log on to social media, and find out exactly where your friends are and what they ate for dinner.

As with the advent of any new technology, the explosion of information in the past half-century has led many social commentators to wonder—is it too much? Some believe that we are merely reacting to the surfeit of information the same way people have always reacted to new technology. “Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid,” writes Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Similarly, philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan said in 1962, “We are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typographical and mechanical age. And we are experiencing the same confusions and indecisions which they had felt when living simultaneously in two contrasted forms of society and experience.”

However, some posit that the Internet is physically rewiring the way our brains work, reducing our attention spans, and destroying our short-term memory. Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, says that we only absorb knowledge when we pay close attention to a new piece of information. “When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online,” he writes, “our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.” Meanwhile, Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, explains that the more options and knowledge we have about any given decision, the less happy we are about our ultimate choice. “Adding options to people’s lives can’t help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be,” he says. “And what that’s going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they’re good results.”

Still others think that our ability to be constantly connected is ultimately a good thing. Listing such successful endeavors as Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that can be edited by the general public, and CouchSurfing.org, a website that allows people to open

1

their homes to travelers free of charge, professor of Internet law Jonathan Zittrain says,

“The Internet isn’t just a pile of information. It’s not a noun. It’s a verb. And when you go on it, if you listen and see care-fully and closely enough, what you will discover is that that information is saying some-thing to you. . . . It’s saying, ‘Let’s march.’” Zittrain believes that increased connectivity can spark a spirit of philanthropy, generosity, and action in all of us.

Love and Information is not as simple as an indictment of the Information Age. “It seemed important to me that one doesn’t read the play as a critique of our obsession with information,” says James Macdonald, director of the New York and London premieres, who worked closely with Churchill during rehearsals. “Of course, technology increases the degree to which we’re all exposed to information, but that’s not the argument [Churchill is] making. She’s just saying, ‘Look, this is something we all really, really do seem to want and need and process in different ways.’”

Claude Shannon and all information scientists following him have struggled to make telecommunication devices distinguish between the meaningless noise and the meaningful signal, but Love and Information underlines that we are nothing like those unfeeling machines. As Macdonald says, “I think the thing that Caryl’s aware of and that she’s playing on is that it’s so impossible for information to be neutral the moment it gets into a human head. It starts to create feelings.”

SOURCES “Afterwords: A Conversation with James Macdonald and R. Darren Gobert,” New York Theatre Workshop (February 11, 2013), https://www.nytw.org/mp3s/love%20and%20information/Feb%2011%20talkback%20-%20James%20Macdonald,%20R.%20Darren%20Gobert.mp3; Nicholas Carr, “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?” The Wall Street Journal (June 5, 2010), http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284981644790098; James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011); OED Online, “information, n.” (March 2015), http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/95568; Michael Proffitt, “information,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english-word-stories/information; Barry Schwartz, “The Paradox of Choice,” TED (July 2005) http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en; Clay Shirky, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” The Wall Street Journal (June 4, 2010), http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334; Jonathan Zittrain, “The Web As Random Acts of Kindness,” TED (July 2009), http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_zittrain_the_web_is_a_random_act_of_kindness?language=en

Partial “map” of the Internet in 2005, by The Opte Project. Each

line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses.

The length of the line is indicative of the delay between those

two nodes.

“It Doesn’t Hurt to Know”Annotations of Selected Scenes from Love and Information

By Nirmala Nataraj and Anna Woodruff

“Lab” (excerpt)

So we hatch a batch of eggs in the lab

and where do you get the

from the poultry breeders who supply them to the factory (farms)

oh the intensive

yes or some of them might go to the family farms but either way [. . .] because at that degree of magnification a thumbnail would be two hundred and fifty meters wide

so you can see the memory

yes you can see the actual changes

see what the chick learned about the bead

In this scene, one of the longest in the play, a scientist explains an experiment they have performed on newly hatched chicks; the character places two sets of beads (ones dipped in water and ones dipped in a bitter liquid) before the chicks. The chicks that peck at the bitter beads reflexively wipe their beaks on the ground. A radioactive fluid is then injected into the chicks’ brains. The scientist repeats this experiment in a second round; the chicks that chose the bitter beads remember doing so and refrain from pecking, unlike the others. After the second round, the chicks that remembered not to peck at the beads get their heads cut off, and their brains are removed, frozen, thinly sliced, and examined under a microscope. In this manner, the scientist can determine where in the chicks’ brains physical changes related to memory and learning occurred.

In 1986 neurobiologist Steven Rose published a report in New Scientist entitled “Memories and Molecules.” Caryl Churchill chose to demonstrate the exact experiment Rose performed in the 1980s. Using an electron microscope, Rose was able to pinpoint the changes made in each chick’s brain at the moment it recalled pecking a bitter bead and, as a result, chose not to peck at a second bead. He called this “one-trial, passive-avoidance learning,” which involves three steps: learning, memory, and recall.

A number of changes occurred in the brains of the chicks who chose not to peck at a second bead. Three sections of each brain revealed changes: the medial hyperstriatum

ventrale, the lobus parolfactorius, and the paleostriatum augmenta-tum. These areas are located in the left hemisphere of the brain, which Rose theorizes is where most of the memory function is housed. The experiment led to important devel-opments in scientists’ understanding of the formation and recollection of humans’ long-term memories.

“Star” (excerpt)

It takes the light two point eight million years to get here.

So we’re looking at two point eight million years ago.

It might not be there. It could have died by now.

Two characters are looking at a star that is 2.8 million light-years away. They question whether or not what they are looking at is actually there, or if it’s a remnant of a bygone time. A light-year is a unit of distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of 186,411 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second, meaning that light travels 5.8 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers) in one year. The Crab Nebula supernova remnant is about 4,000 light-years away, while the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.3 million light-years away. In contrast, the Sun’s light takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel to us, meaning that it is a mere 0.00001585 light-years away.

Because light from most celestial objects takes such a long time to travel to Earth, a snapshot of the night sky is actually a snapshot of the past. If a person is looking at a star that is 2.8 million light-years away, they are actually getting a glimpse of what the star looked like 2.8 million years ago; today, in fact, the star may be dead.

“Memory House” (excerpt)

the actual technique is you take a place like you could take a house

take a house?

in your mind this is a mental take a house you know in your mind

like my aunt’s got a house

there you are take this house in your mind and you’ve got a list of things you want to remember

like what?

The Crab Nebula supernova remnant. Photo by NASA,

ESA, and J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University).

The manner in which we remember events, create and store memories, and even improve our capacity to easily recall information is at the heart of this scene, in which two characters walk through a “memory house.” In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, science Journalist Joshua Foer explains that the memory-palace technique entails using one’s imagination to walk through a familiar building. A person then assigns specific memories to various objects within a given location. When information such as a speech, items on a list, or anything else that might be difficult to recall must be summoned, one simply journeys to the appropriate room and finds the object associated with the memory. The mental association between a familiar physical location and something that might otherwise be difficult to recollect is believed to be particularly useful when it comes to helping people recall large amounts of information.

According to Foer, the first person to discover the efficacy of this technique was Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, in the fifth century bce. He was attending a dinner party when the building he was in collapsed; as the sole survivor, he was asked to account for all those who were buried in the debris. As the poet closed his eyes, he imagined the building and realized that he remembered precisely where each guest had sat at the banquet table. From this insight, Simonides reasoned that anything could be retained in one’s memory through the construction of a “memory palace.”

The memory-palace technique entails five steps. First, choose a location with which you are very familiar, such as your current home or workplace. This is your “palace.” Instead of simply visualizing a static scene, imagine walking along a specific route in your palace. Second, pay attention to distinctive features in your palace, just as you would if you were actually there. Third, imprint the palace on your mind. This can be done in a number of ways, such as physically walking along the route and repeating aloud the distinctive features as you notice them, and then writing down the features on a piece of paper and mentally walking through the palace while repeating them aloud. Fourth, make visual associations between the information you want to memorize and objects in the memory palace. For example, if you want to memorize a grocery list, you might visualize milk flowing through your front door. (Interestingly, the more nonsensical and unusual the visual association, the more likely it is that your memory will be jogged.) Finally, repeatedly visualize walking through your memory palace, from the beginning to the end of your route, and back again in the opposite direction.

The memory-palace technique was adopted by ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians like Cicero and Quintilian. Although it fell out of favor after the invention of the printing press, it experienced a resurgence in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in international memory competitions in which participants use a variety of techniques to recall large lists of items within a short period of time. Simon Reinhard, who used the memory-palace technique, holds the record for memorizing a pack of playing cards in 21.19 seconds at the German International Memory Competition in 2011. He set another record the following year when he memorized the order of 370

playing cards. The title character of the BBC/Masterpiece television series Sherlock summons peripheral details by using the memory-palace technique, which offers him a way to store copious amounts of otherwise forgettable information.

Champions of memory contests use the technique to recall faces, digits, and lists of words, but scientists have noted that the memory palace has little to do with intellectual capacity; rather, it is related to the use of regions of the brain responsible for recording information about a person’s environment and spatial orientation. (An example of spatial memory would be navigating a familiar city without explicit directions.) Of course, the memory-palace technique doesn’t work for everyone; someone who tends to process information verbally might not do well in constructing their own memory palace, even though they might otherwise retain memories and details quite accurately.

“Piano” (entire scene; one of two scenes including three people)

This is Jonathan.

Hello, Jonathan.

Here’s the piano. You can play the piano.

I’ve never played the piano.

You sit here.

(He sits. He plays well and Jonathan sings. He gets up.)

Hello.

This is Jonathan.

Hello, Jonathan.

In this scene, a man who says he has never played the piano before ends up playing with perfect facility. The scene is based on Clive Wearing, an English music scholar and accomplished musician with BBC Radio 3, who contracted herpesviral encephalitis, which destroyed his brain’s ability to store new memories and to connect with previous memories in an effective fashion. Damage was waged upon Wearing’s hippocampus, an area of the brain that transfers short-term memories to long-term memories. As a result, his memory lasts only between 7 and 30 seconds.

Wearing retains few memories from before 1985, when he contracted the virus. He knows that he has children from an earlier marriage, but he cannot remember their names. And although he remembers the names of foods, he is unable to link these memories with taste and forgets what he is eating by the time food has reached his mouth.

Despite having no recollection of receiving a musical education, Wearing still knows how to play the piano and conduct an orchestra. His procedural memory, or memory for the performance of specific types of action, is unaffected. However, when the music stops, he forgets that he has been playing it.

“Sex” (entire scene)

What sex evolved to do is get information from two sets of genes so you get offspring that’s not identical to you. Otherwise you just keep getting the same thing over and over again like hydra or starfish. So sex essentially is information.

You don’t think that while we’re doing it do you?

It doesn’t hurt to know it. Information and also love.

If you’re lucky.

In this scene, sex is described as a way of exchanging genetic information. Every nucleus of a cell contains chromosomes, thread-like structures containing strands of genetic information, or DNA. DNA has four primary organic molecules (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine), but it is the order in which each strand is organized that makes the genetic makeup of every human being unique.

Within our chromosomes are sets of genes (hereditary information made up of DNA) that determine traits ranging from eye color to height. Through the process of meiosis, a person’s chromosomes are split and become gametes, or sex cells (eggs in females and sperm in males). Through sexual reproduction, a sperm and an egg exchange DNA, and individual chromosomes from the two sex cells combine. Each individual sperm and egg carries 23 chromosomes, including the sex-determining chromosome (X or Y). All eggs contain an X chromosome, while a sperm may contain either an X or a Y chromosome. The merging of two X chromosomes through sex creates a female zygote, while the merging of an X and Y chromosome results in a male zygote. When an egg and a sperm meet, the two sets of chromosomes come together to create an embryo with 46 chromosomes within each of its cells. Only our sex cells contain 23 chromosomes.

“Wife” (excerpt)

But I am your wife.

You look like my wife.

That’s because I am. Look, even that little birthmark behind my ear. Look.

Yes, I see it.

It’s me. Sweetheart, it’s me. I’m here.

No, she’s gone. They’ve all gone.

In this scene, a man does not recognize the woman in front of him, even though she insists that she is his wife and that she loves him. Despite her insistence, he tells her that she disgusts and frightens him. Although Caryl Churchill does not make the circumstances of the scene explicit in her script, one possibility for the character’s lack of recognition is a condition known as prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia (or “face blindness”) is a severe neurological deficit that keeps people from remembering the faces of familiar individuals. Acquired prosopagnosia can result

from a brain injury or stroke, while developmental prosopagnosia tends to appear in early childhood. The condition affects a person’s ability to recognize certain facial expressions or such attributes as age, gender, or race/ethnicity. Many prosopagnosics learn to cope by developing compensatory mechanisms (for example, identifying friends and family by hair color, stature, gait, or the specific location in which an interaction might occur) that help them function normally in their lives. However, others have reported that the disease has damaged their interpersonal relationships and social lives.

According to researchers, 1 in 50 people have some form of prosopagnosia. Although some are only selectively impaired, others are affected so severely that the condition gradually moves beyond facial recognition and affects their ability to discern objects in their environment. Although scientists have come up with several explanations for prosopagnosia, it remains something of a medical mystery, as it may result from many different types of neurological impairment. There is no cure for the condition.

“The Child Who Didnt Know Pain” (excerpt)

But if I pinch you

nothing

nothing at all

but stop because I get bruises.

How come you dont

I never did when I was a baby

you were born like

yes and I used to chew my fingers

you mean chew?

and they got bandages put over or I’d chew them to the bone because you know how babies

put everything in their mouth

I’d put myself in my mouth because it wasn’t any different.

Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) is an extremely rare genetic disorder. CIPA disrupts the development of nerve fibers that carry sensations of pain, heat, and cold to the brain. The disorder does not affect the other senses. In order for the disease to occur, a specific gene must be mutated in both the mother’s and the father’s DNA. Two partners with similar genetic makeup are more likely to have the same mutation, which is why this genetic disorder is usually found in cultures in which intermarriage is common.

Although the genetic mutation can be diagnosed early in a pregnancy through blood samples, such prenatal tests may cause harm to the developing fetus and carry the risk of miscarriage. Detecting the disorder in an infant is also difficult; after all, an individual

needs to be able to talk and, moreover, to know what pain is before he or she can communicate that it cannot be felt. The diagnosis of CIPA is suspected in infants and children who have recurring fevers or a tendency to bite their tongue, lips, or fingers after the first teeth are developed. However, parents usually don’t notice when their children are injured, because they receive no warning signals, such as crying or exclamations of

“Ouch!” In older individuals, it tends to be diagnosed after repeated traumatic injuries. CIPA does not affect cognitive abilities, but as patients grow older, they will continue

to injure themselves unintentionally. Most patients do not live long, as pain serves as a necessary survival mechanism that helps us manage the effects of many injuries, diseases, and infections that would otherwise go unnoticed without awareness of the pain stimulus. Without proper detection, it is difficult to utilize preventive medicine and care that could treat these ailments.

“Chinese Poetry” (entire scene)

“The girl waits at the door of her house on the mountain”

What it literally says is “mountain girl door”

So maybe

A girl from the mountain is waiting outside my door. A girl climbs the mountain and comes to a door.

To get the girl you have to go through a door into the mountain.

The mountain is a door only a girl can open.

The girl’s as big as a mountain and cant get through the door.

What’s the next line?

Translating poetry into English from another language is a challenging task, particularly when one is doing so from a language that uses characters different from the modern English alphabet, like Chinese. In fact, Irish poet-translator John Turner has said, “No one could be really faithful to the strict formalism of most Chinese verse and do anything but attempt a counterpart in English verse.”

In Chinese poetry, form relates directly to function. Therefore, meaning is created not just through the denotation of the words, but also through the physical composition of the characters. Understanding context, not just the pure meaning of words, is also essential in translating Chinese poetry, because many of the same characters translate to different English words; for instance, the character 看 can mean “watch,” “read,” “look,” or “see.”

“Virtual” (excerpt)

I dont care what you say

no but listen

I’ve never felt like this

that’s not the point what you feel

it’s the only

because she doesnt exist

I’m not listening.

She doesnt

In this scene, a person justifies their new relationship with a virtual woman. The 2013 Spike Jonze film, Her, brought the notion of computer-operated paramours to broader attention. The film follows writer Theodore Twombly, who falls in love with a Siri-like operating system named Samantha. Samantha is able to grow emotionally and cognitively as she interacts with Theodore, while he learns more about human relationships and his own life during his relationship with her.

At the beginning of the millennium, game designer Will Wright created the popular virtual-reality game The Sims, in which players create virtual people called “Sims.” Wright was inspired to create what he called a “virtual doll house” after his home and possessions were destroyed during the Oakland firestorm of 1991, which led him to adapt those lost objects and experiences into a game. In order to develop a realistic model for the game’s artificial intelligence, he took some ideas from social psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, outlined in his 1943 paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Many players used the creation of an alternate life in a virtual world as a form of escape and wish fulfillment. As the game’s producer, John Davis, explained, “Through the game, people are able to control their world.”

Such games became springboards for “dating sims,” a video-game subgenre that targets players who are looking for romance. Currently, one of the most popular games in this genre is only available in Japan: LovePlus for Nintendo DS. Players are given the option to pick one (or more) of three girls to woo—Rinko, Nene, and Manaka—all with varying personalities. Because the girls are merely characters in a video game, conversation is limited to certain topics but is dynamic enough to keep men playing the game for years at a time, sometimes lasting even longer than real-life relationships.

In a BBC article titled “The Japanese Men Who Prefer Virtual Girlfriends to Sex,” Kunio Kitamura of the Japan Family Planning Association describes the Japanese men who play these games as “herbivores,” referring to their lack of sexual desire. Sociologists even claim that Japan’s low fertility rate is a direct result of games like LovePlus. Although critics commonly claim that such games alienate individuals from reality and do not facilitate healthy social interactions, many testimonies suggest that these virtual romance games have been crucial in easing social anxiety and generating positive real-life connections. Individuals with social anxiety and Asperger’s syndrome have claimed that such games are valuable practice for real-life situations.

Questions to Consider1. Caryl Churchill’s individual scenes in Love and Information offer dialogue that can potentially inhabit multiple contexts. For the scenes you remember, how many other characters and situations can you imagine in place of the ones featured onstage?

2. Which scenes resonate with you or linger in your memory?

3. Did direction choices and design elements make Love and Information feel “San Franciscan”? How could this play have been staged to the same effect in a different location?

4. What do you think the relationship is between love and information? What does “information” mean to you? What does “love” mean to you?

5. Was it easy or difficult for you to sink into the nonlinear, non-narrative format of Love and Information? What were some of the rewards and challenges of watching the play?

6. Churchill’s script notes that the order of the scenes is mutable within each section of the play. Do you think your experience of Love and Information would have been different if the order of the scenes had been different? Why do you think specific scenes were grouped together in specific sections?

7. In comparison to the live performance, what was your experience of the video portions of the play, both in the lobby and inside the theater?

8. One of Churchill’s collaborators has said, “The really unusual thing about Caryl is that she doesn’t write a play unless she has found a completely original form that expresses the idea.” How does the form support the idea that Churchill is expressing in Love and Information?

For Further Information . . .Aston, Elaine, and Elin Diamond, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Churchill, Caryl. Love and Information. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2013.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.

Gobert, R. Darren, ed. The Theatre of Caryl Churchill. London, UK: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014.