City Garage presents the Los Angeles Premiere of

The Skriker
By Caryl Churchill

March 9 – April 15, 2001

Directed by Frederíque Michel
Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe Jr.
Assistant Director Paul M. Rubenstein

Cast:
Jonathan Cobb	The Bogle, The Spriggan, The Marquis, The Businessman
Chris Codol	The Man With the Bucket, A Brownie
Michael Connelly 	The Brownie, The Black Dog
Jennifer Dion 	Annie Greenteeth, The Granddaughter
David Frank 	The Keplie
Ilana Gustafson	The Skriker 
Dyan Kane	The Hag, The Red Lady, The Fair Fairy, The Woman in Black, The Kelpie’s Woman
Katharina Lejona 	The Black Annis, The Businesswoman
Cynthia Mance 	Lily
Jody Moschetti 	Josie
Cheryl Scaccio 	The Green Lady, A Brownie
Eric Talon 	Johnny Squarefoot, A Businessman
Veronica Valentine 	The Girl With the Telescope, Rawheadandbloodybones
Charlene Yang 	The Dancer, A Brownie, The Lost Girl, The Great-granddaughter

Crew:
Set, Sound, and Lighting Design	Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.
Assistant Director	Paul M. Rubenstein
Costume Design	Michele Gingembre, Erin Vincent
Masks	Michele Gingembre, David Frank
Light/Sound Operator	Andrea Isco
Stage Managers 	Maureen Byrnes, Bo Roberts
Photography 	Ray Mickshaw

Time: The Present                                         Place: England
Scenes:
1. The Underworld
2. A hospital
3. The street
4. A pub
5. The street
6. Lily’s bed-sit
7. A park
8. The Underworld
9. The Underworld, a hundred  years later
10. The same park, the same day
11. Lily’s bed-sit
12. Lily’s bed-sit, some weeks later
13. A park
14. A small room
15. The hospital
16. A dark place, a hundred years later

The play runs approximately 110 minutes
and is performed without an intermission

About the Play:

Late in Caryl Churchill’s play, the title character, the Skriker—“a shape-shifter and death portent, ancient and damaged”—is trying hard to seduce Lily, the young woman whose love she so desperately needs. In an attempt to get through to her she says:

“Have you noticed the large number of meteorological phenomena lately? Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Drought. Apocalyptic meteorological phenomena. The increase of sickness. It was always possible to think, whatever your personal problem, there’s always nature. Spring will return even if it’s without me. Nobody loves me but at least it’s a sunny day. This has been a comfort to people as long as they’ve existed. But it’s not available anymore. Sorry. Nobody loves me and the sun’s going to kill me. Spring will return and nothing will grow. Some people might feel concerned about that. But it makes me feel important. I’m going to be around when the world as we know it ends. I’m going to witness unprecedented catastrophe. I like a pileup on the motorway. I like the kind of war we’ve been having lately. I like snuff movies. But this is going to be the big one.”

When she started speaking, this angry and malevolent faerie did not intend to reveal so much; her rage gets the better of her. But what she says here is at the heart of the play. The earth is sick; human beings have brought on its fatal illness; and nature is about to get even. Nowadays, Nature likes a snuff film.
	Churchill wrote this play in 1993; it premiered at the National Theater in London in 1994. In it she draws heavily on British folklore and mythology. The Skriker, “not a major spirit, but a spirit,” is hungry for the love and respect human beings once extended to the faerie world—the mysterious creatures and spirits of the earth who for tens of thousands of years personified mankind’s understanding of nature. Goblins, Spriggans, Bogles, Elves, Fairies, Brownies—both helpful and dangerous—represented man’s more organic, and more ancient, connection to the world: a way of understanding an existence in which it was imperative to live in balance with nature, to treat every element of the landscape with caution, respect, and more than a little fear. 
The last vestige of that way of looking at the world perished with the Industrial Revolution. Respect has been replaced with arrogance, caution with foolhardiness, a wise sense of balance with a prodigal destruction of the irreplaceable. The world, with its swelling population, dwindling resources, and stifling poisons is hurtling toward catastrophe.  The Skriker, a sick but ferocious representative of an older understanding re-emerges from the underworld, determined to strike back at the bringers of this global disease: human beings. At her back follow other ancient creatures, equally damaged and equally out of place, but just as determined to avenge a savaged planet. What the Skriker wants, so she says, is a human baby, ostensibly a means of bringing a revival of the ancient powers of Faerie. But what she’s really after, or at least so Churchill implies, is the eradication of the human future. After the next mass extinction, whether by means of a good-sized asteroid or self-induced, the planet would renew itself in a mere few million years: the blink of an eye, in geologic time. As the Skriker stares out at us with her mad eyes, babbling her broken words, and grinning with glee at the humans she loathes and fears, be careful to look closely. Don’t blink.
	Caryl Churchill has been hailed as one of the world’s foremost living dramatists.  She is the author of some twenty plays, including Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Serious Money, and Mad Forest.

About the Creatures:
The Skiker
A shape-shifter and death-portent, ancient and damaged.

Annie Greenteeth
Annie Greenteeth, with her long, flowing hair and sharp teeth, is a water spirit who lurks in swamps, bogs, and slow-moving rivers. She hides in shallow, murky water with her head half-submerged like a frog and looks for unwary children to drown and devour.

The Black Annis
A long-nosed hag, thought to be a survivor of the most ancient times in Britain, and once a goddess. In the spring, she steals the body of a beautiful young maiden and clothes herself in it. She feeds herself with pieces of the body until, by winter, she has consumed all the decaying flesh and is once again a hideously ugly old woman roaming the fens, wailing with the pangs of hunger.

The Bogle
An evil-natured goblin who tortures liars and murderers. He haunts crossroads at night and likes to trick merchants and travelers.

Brownies
Small and shaggy spirits who dress in tattered robes. Highland Brownies have no fingers or toes, Lowland Brownies have no noses.  Brownies can be either helpful or harmful depending on they are treated. If a Brownie is left a bowl of cream or good milk, he will adopt a house and complete, in secret, human work that has been left undone. If offended, he will bang on the wall, throw things (or even people), pinch sleepers, destroy clothes, or tell secrets out loud.  He particularly likes gifts of clothing, especially trousers.

Changelings
Babies have great value to the world of Faerie. They are often stolen and then raised in the underworld, either to breed with (and thus inject fresh blood into this dwindling race), or as the tithe that the Faerie world must pay to Hell every seven years. A baby is stolen and a changeling is left in its place—a repulsive creature that by means of enchantment appears to be an exact replica of the human child. A changeling can be forced to betray its faerie nature by various means. One is to place it on a red-hot shovel or throw it on the fire. It will then fly up the chimney, laughing and shrieking. Another method is to go through the motions of brewing beer in empty eggshells. This baffling activity provokes the curious spirit into revealing its age. If the goblin can be tricked out of its disguise and driven away, the real child will be found at the door or outside the window.

The Green Lady
Also sometimes called The Glastig, The Green Lady is a water faerie, part seductive woman and part goat who hides her bestial parts under a long, glowing dress. She lures men to dance with her before she feeds, vampire-like on their blood. Her victims, blinded by love, become gradually weaker, more exhausted, and finally crippled, yet never cease to long for the beautiful creature who is gradually destroying them.

Johnny Squarefoot
A half-man, half pig who falls in love with beautiful humans but whose clumsy body and frightening appearance inspires only fear and loathing. He is a kind creature and utterly harmless but can find no one who will accept his companionship.

The Kelpie
A Celtic water faerie, half-man, half-horse, who haunts seas and lochs. He lures unsuspecting humans into the water, then tears them to pieces and devours them, leaving nothing but the liver. He particularly seeks out and seduces beautiful women. If he can induce them to mount him, he carries them into the sea and destroys them.

Rawheadandbloodybones
One of the most evil of the border goblins. He lives on ancient battlefields and in the ruins of fortresses, castles, and, towers. Once a cruel and violent human soldier, his offenses against the world of Faerie condemned him to the underworld where he was first made immortal and then flayed alive. His pain never ceases and he vents his rage against whatever human beings fall into his hands by tearing them in pieces and eating them alive.

The Spriggan
Spriggans are dour, ugly, and grotesque in shape. Although quite small, they have the ability to inflate themselves into monstrous forms. They are infamous villains, skilled thieves, and thoroughly destructive: they rob houses, kidnap children (leaving a repulsive baby Spriggan in exchange), cause whirlwinds, and blight crops.