I have officially decided that my favorite moments in life are the unexpected ones. Why? Because it is so darn cool when you expect to have an ordinary night and have an amazing one instead! That's what last Friday was like for me. 

My sister was in town, and I wanted to take her to see some theatre. It is, after all, a huge part of my life both in London and in the States, and I like sharing it with people I love. So my sister, my friend Beth and I headed out to the Menier Chocolate Factory, a South Bank theatre that my professor had told me had a great revival of Caryl Churchill's A Number running. It was closing night, and I was particularly psyched to go because I'd never seen this show. I've been fascinated by Caryl Churchill's work ever since I dramaturged Ithaca College's production of Top Girls last year, and this was a great chance to get to learn more about it.

So we found the theatre, wandered in, and sat down to an hour of fascinating theatre. On the surface, A Number is about human cloning and what it means to be unique. I came away from this particular production, however, thinking about love and how differently it can manifest itself depending on the situation. The Menier Chocolate Factory's production was also interesting because it cast a father and a son, Timothy West and Samuel West, to play father and son characters. Both of the Wests gave captivating performances, and I was totally involved in the play until the lights came up and we filed out of the theatre.

One of the requirements of the Ithaca College London Centre's Interrelationships class is that we write one paper on a different play for each half of the semester. I decided I wanted to write my paper on A Number, so my sister, Beth and I walked up to the box office desk to ask if they were selling the script. The woman at the desk said no, they weren't selling it.

"Where could they find one?" She asked an older woman standing by the box office. The woman replied that she thought we should look in bookstores--that A Number was probably out there somewhere, but she wasn't sure where. As she said this, I realized that we were standing in front of the playwright herself! Caryl freaking Churchill was in the same room as me! As she walked away, I knew that I had to go talk to her. This was my chance to hold an intelligent conversation with one of the top playwrights in the world. It was now or never! I stood awkwardly off to one side while she chatted with some friends, then walked to the bar to catch her as she ordered a drink.

"Hi, are you Caryl Churchill?" Of course she was! I introduced myself and told her I was a theatre student, and it all went fairly well from there. I told her I had dramaturged Top Girls, and we talked about the difference between that show and some of her newer work, including A Number, which was first performed in 2002. 

Churchill's work has been particularly interesting in the last couple of years because she's been gradually working all of the stage directions out of her texts. Stage directions, by the way, are basically whatever words you find in a play that aren't dialogue or the characters names. They tell you what physical action a character should do, what the set looks like, or sometimes even what the character looks like. Sometimes they're useful, but to tell you the truth, I think stage directions are irritating. They impose limits on the actors, designers, and directors, and force them into a box made by the playwright. Churchill gets that.

She pointed out to me that stage directions are a twentieth century concept. Shakespeare didn't use stage directions, she told me. They were added in later, either by the stage manager or the actors who published the first Folio. So Churchill has taken stage directions out of her shows, freeing up the actors, designers, and directors to do what they will with the text. It's a smart move, and one that shows a lot of trust in the people who put on her plays. Without the stage directions, the cast has only the dialogue to work with. No hints, no clues, just a conversation. It must be slightly terrifying and difficult, but god is it cool!

I walked away from my conversation with Caryl Churchill feeling supremely good about the world. I'm a little bit of a fan girl, for sure, but I also managed to have an intelligent conversation with one of world's top playwrights, as well as someone I admire personally. As my mother said later, it was a classic London theatre moment. I'm so happy it happened--and I can't wait to write that paper!