“You can tame a wild animal only so far.”

To open our season theme, “Where is the Empathy?”, The Seeing Place presents Caryl Churchill’s revolutionary masterwork CLOUD 9, an audacious and playful take on sexual politics. Drawing a line between Colonialism and Feminism, this modern classic bends time, gender, and genre and embraces the confusion and complication of identity.

This two-act, time-shifting comedy by the author of Top Girls created a sensation with its world premiere in London in 1979 and its Off Broadway premiere in 1981. The New York Times calls Caryl Churchill “one of the wisest and bravest playwrights on the planet.”

The searing comedy is a parody and spoof of the Victorian Empire and its rigid attitudes, especially toward sex. There is Clive, a British functionary; his wife Betty (played by a man); their daughter Victoria (a rag doll); Clive’s friend Harry, an explorer; Mrs. Saunders, who runs about dressed in a riding habit; Clive’s son Edward, who still plays with dolls and is played by a woman; and Joshua, a native servant who knows exactly what is really going on. What really is going on is a marvelous send-up and a non-stop round-robin of sexual liaisons. All this time the natives are restless in the background. The second act shifts to London in 1980. Except for the surviving characters, it is only twenty-five years later, and all those repressed sexual longings have evaporated, along with the Empire.

WHO IS THE SEEING PLACE?
“The Seeing Place” is the literal translation of the Greek word theatron: “…the place where we go to understand ourselves.”

The Seeing Place Ensemble is an actor-driven company: built by actors and managed by actors to be a base for actors who want to grow & hone their craft in a creative and supportive artistic home. TSP is forcefully committed to four key elements of theatre-making: developing highly trained actors into thriving self-producers; honoring the craft of the acting process through rehearsal and into performance thereby bringing organic, “fully lived” storytelling to our community; presenting compelling works by master playwrights that reflect the struggles and triumphs of our current society; and making theater accessible for all New Yorkers by keeping ticket prices low and affordable.

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One of the great plays is being produced at the Access Theater: Cloud 9, the first of Caryl Churchill’s many magnum opuses. Yes, Caryl Churchill, without question a top ten English language playwright (don’t question me I’ll fight you), may have many, many greatest of works. And Cloud 9, a play of such density and dynamism, a play of such warmth and bitter intelligence, a play of such sobering and poignant import…well, it’s just frankly shocking that it’s not done more frequently, like every freaking day. The Seeing Place Theater ensemble, a company I intend to keep my eye on, does this masterwork more than justice in a very fine production co-directed by Brandon Walker and Erin Cronican. Like a veteran trainer, they take this beast of a play, bursting with energy and opportunity, and produce an intelligible and pointed and very enjoyable production. To the ensemble’s credit, they ask the work to speak for itself, accentuating the theatrical and cultural elements of the play. Cloud 9 interests itself in the transgressions against and the repercussions of the sexual and sociological conditioning of Great Britain. Concerned with a single family in 1880 and then 25 years later, but ta …Read more