SOURCE: Brown, Mark Thacker. “‘Constantly Coming Back’: Eastern Thought and the Plays of Caryl Churchill.” In Caryl Churchill: A Casebook, edited by Phyllis R. Randall, pp. 25–47. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989.

In the following essay, Brown explores the influence that the Taoist yin and yang principles, Theravada and Zen Buddhist ideologies, and Jain beliefs each have on Churchill's writing.

In an interview in 1982 Caryl Churchill admitted that while she attended Oxford she was “‘strongly influenced by Buddhism, and that sort of thing,’ to which she finds herself ‘constantly coming back’” (Thurman 54). Yet only three of her plays, Owners, Not … not … not … not … not Enough Oxygen, and Top Girls, contain overt references to Buddhism. Even in these plays, the allusions to Buddhism seem merely tangential to the more important issues of ownership, ecology, and sexual identity. So what are we to make of Churchill's claim that she keeps returning to...