What will you do if discovered that there are some copies of you walking on the street? “A number” is a theatrical test that, with one fiction sudden, approaching the future reality on the familiar structure. Written in 2002, by Caryl Churchil, 5 years after the cloning of Dolly Sheep. A Number, beyond approach about genetics modifications, highlights about how the advances on the technology can to affect in familiar relationships, whether in affectively and ethically. It is important to highlight that the affective implications are stronger in this work.
A Number is not the first work by Caryl that went on stage. This writer comes producing great works long times. She was born on 3 September 1938 in London and grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read English. Downstairs, her first play, was written while she was still at univer‐ sity, was first staged in 1958 and won an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge's Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year.
She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974‐5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups 'Joint Stock' and 'Monstrous Regi‐ ment'. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980. Top Girls brings together five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant given by Marlene, the new managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency.
About “A Number”
A Number is a fast paced play set in the near future when the startling discovery of an underground cloning experiment has become the forefront of one family’s conflict. Bernard has made a life‐changing discovery: he is one of “a number” of clones that were created from the cells of an older brother he never knew he had. Bernard (B2) approaches his aging father, Salter, with the information and Salter explains that Bernard’s older brother (also named Bernard – B1) had been killed in a car crash at a young age. Salter says that in his grief, he chose to engage in a cloning experiment meant to recreate his lost son . Any other clones that were made were because the doctors were unethically using the cells and that he and Bernard should sue. Just days after B2 left, B1 appears at his father’s door very much alive and angry. He too has learned about the clones.
Salter reveals that B1 didn’t die, but was cloned as a way to cor‐ rect his parental mistakes made after his wife’s suicide. Salter then had B1 sent away. B1 is filled with contempt for his father and has an explosive temper – the opposite of his calmer, younger brother, B2. Later, B2 returns to Salter’s house after meeting with his older counterpart. B2 reveals that he plans to leave the country, partly out of fear of B1 and partly to avoid running into more versions of himself. B1 returns to Salter’s house with his more confuse news: he followed B2 out of the coun‐ try and killed him. After yet another tragic turn of events, Salter seeks out one of the genetically identical clones, a man named Michael Black. He asks Michael questions, trying to learn what is shared between his sons, and finds him pleasant and undisturbed by the knowledge that he is also one of “a number.”
natural vs nature
This narrative starts with a big hypnotic effect, because there are an expectative about the dialogues between father and sons. Beyond of “human cloning”, this narrative is a confront between ourselves. The relationship between father and sons can cause one auto-analyses about our images: we are shadow of ours relationships. Churchil does an attention social and human in this drama. It is for this that we can feel each characters and come to us each details that we have in our quotidian and we do not stay comfortable with a play like A Number, she revels the behaviours of human nature
We call Nature that which is innate, biologically determined. Its opposite, the Nurture is related to the environment, which is determined cultural or contingently. Besides the issue of cloning, we have that ask for a question about free will and to what extent it is determined by our genetic heritage or the environment in which we grow. Bernard 2 possessed a very angry and embittered behavior. The fact that he lived moments of life that Salter was distant from him, made B2 to become a child vindictive and hurt by the past. B1 and B2 were similar genetically, but what made it different from each other was the environment in which both grew.
If Salter’s sons are all from the same genetic material, why did the three we meet become so different? The relationship between B2, B1and Michael proves that the Nurture can be real in our life. Salter “created” other Bernard because he would like to have a copy like his original son, but the theory about Nurture can confront with “genetic modification/cloning”. If it is possible to be different thought of Nurture (when the person has characteristic depending of space who live), cloning can be turning impossible, because the only “thing” similar is the genetic, but what the person really is? Salter did not hope which would live with different persons, and that his life would be a try of to convene his cloning to have a life similar to “original”.
It is possible to perceive that the “cloning” do not is cited by characters. The word that is cited is “copies”. The fault of this word show us that the play is more about conflicts between families. We can to compare the history of ”Bernard’s” with biblical story: Cain and Abel, or Jacob and Esau. Like B1 and B2. Cain and Abel wanted be the best son of their father (God). B1 wanted be the favourite son too, like Abel. The death of both mark one of the main theme: A number is a fantasy that show the possibilities of come back to past, but without departing from this present. Churchyl makes it clear that cloning will not to change the past and that our mistakes will not to be erasing with help of modification biologic
The tragedy in this theatre is a persona tragedy. This is when “Men and Women”, which suffers an that are destructed in their relationship more intimate; the individual knowing the their destiny in the universe marked by insensibility, that the death is a spirituals isolation extreme are alternative way of same suffer and heroism.
It is possible to see this tragedy between “brothers”, when the only way of to change the conflict is when B1 kills B2. The competition for they have the love of father is finalized with a great tragedy did.