Far Away (play)

Far Away is a 2000 play by British playwright Caryl Churchill. The play has three characters, Harper, Joan, and Todd, and is based on the premise of a world in which everything in nature is at war with each other.

Plot Summary

The play opens with a young Joan describing to her aunt (Harper) having just witnessed her uncle loading bloody children and other people into the back of a lorry. Harper tells Joan that he is saving the children and taking them to a safer place.

We flash forward to an adult Joan working with Todd in a hat makers. They are designing very lavish hats for a competition. The competition involves a parade of prisoners wearing all of the hats and marching them before the judges prior to their execution. Every hat but Joan's is incinerated as hers is declared the winner, and her hat is put into "the museum".

The final scene finds Harper and Todd at Harper's house waiting for Joan to return. They are very worried about Joan who returns in a very frazzled state. She delivers a rambling monologue about her fear of everything from a stream, to horses, to light and dark - not knowing whose side of the war they are on.

Theme

The main theme of "Far Away" is fear. More specifically, the fear imposed by a government upon its citizens. This fear permeates the work from the smuggling of people by Joan's uncle to the public march of death for prisoners of the government.

The theme is brought to its climax in Joan's final monologue where she describes being so afraid of the duality created by the propaganda of this new world that she has trouble walking home because she can't tell whose side a stream is on, or the grass, or the flies, etc.

Production History

A production of "Far Away" ran at New York Theatre Workshop in New York City from November 11, 2002 to January 18, 2003. The production was nominated for the 2003 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Costume Design and Outstanding Sound Design.cite web | url = http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&title=Far%20Away | title = Listing for Far Away on Lortel Archives--The Internet Off-Broadway Database | accessdate = | accessmonthday = November 15| accessyear = 2006| author = | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | date = | year = | month = | format = | work = | publisher = | pages = | language = | archiveurl = | archivedate = ]

References