While raising a family in the 1960s and 1970s, Churchill began to write short radio dramas for
BBC Radio. These included
The Ants (1962),
Not, Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971), and ''Schreber's Nervous Illness
(1972). She also wrote television plays for the BBC, including The After-Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes'' (1982). These, as well as some of her
radio plays, have been adapted for the stage. is the first example of this, and references the surrealist theatre tradition of
Antonin Artaud and the
Theatre of Cruelty. The fragmented and
surrealistic narratives in Churchill's work characterise it as
postmodernist.
Themes and plays In 1972, Churchill wrote
Owners, a two-act, 14-scene play about obsession with power. It was her first professionally produced stage play and "her first major theatrical endeavour"; it was produced in London the same year. She began collaboration with theatre companies such as the
Joint Stock Theatre Company and the
Monstrous Regiment Theatre Company (a
feminist theatre collective). Both used an extended workshop period in their development of new plays. Churchill continues to use an
improvisational workshop period in developing a number of her plays. During this period, she also wrote
Objections to Sex and Violence (1974). Churchill gradually abandoned more conventions of
realism, with her loyalty to feminist themes and ideas becoming a guiding principle in her work. She won an
Obie Award for best play in 1983 with
Top Girls, "which deals with women's losing their humanity in order to attain power in a male-dominated environment." It features an all-female cast, and focuses on Marlene, who has relinquished a home and family to achieve success in the world of business. Half the action takes place at a celebratory dinner where Marlene mixes with historical, iconic and fictional women who have achieved great stature in a "man's world", but always at great cost. The other half of the play, set a year in the past, focuses on Marlene's family, where the true cost of her "successful" life becomes poignantly and frighteningly apparent. In
Top Girls, Churchill devised a system to indicate how the dialogue should be performed. She used the forward dash signal (/) to demonstrate a person interrupting the person speaking. She also used the asterisk symbol (*) to indicate a speech following on from a speech earlier than the one immediately before it.
Softcops (first produced by the
Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984) is a "surreal play set in 19th-century France about government attempts to depoliticize illegal acts". In 2018,
Michael Billington stated that
Softcops "felt like a meditation on crime and punishment lacking Churchill's usual gift of narrative drive." The play
A Mouthful of Birds (1986) was co-written with
David Lan.
Wallace Shawn has argued that it is among the "rich, inventive" Churchill works that are responsible for theater remaining exciting in modern times. Cameron Woodhead of
The Sydney Morning Herald billed the play as "a difficult pleasure to watch and a challenge to perform". Billington listed
A Mouthful of Birds as one of Churchill's misfires, however, and dismissed the play as "mystifying in its attempt to create a dance-drama suggesting that the violence and ecstasy of Euripides'
The Bacchae were alive in modern Britain." Andrew Dickson of
The New Yorker dubbed the play "wryly picaresque" in 2015. Churchill's play
The Skriker (1994) includes distorted language, references to English folktales, and evocations of modern urban life. The Skriker is an ancient shape-shifting fairy and death portent in a search for revenge and love. The play initially received lukewarm reviews from critics, but is now considered among Churchill's successes. "The prolific Churchill continued to push boundaries into the late 1990s. In 1997 she collaborated with the composer Orlando Gough to create 'Hotel,' a choreographed opera or sung ballet set in a hotel room. Also that year her surrealistic short play
This Is a Chair was produced." In 2015,
Moira Buffini of
The Guardian listed
This Is a Chair as one of Churchill's best works, stating that it "shows a real humility about the political inadequacy of playwrights." Her 2002 play,
A Number, addresses the subject of
human cloning and questions of identity. Churchill received an Obie Award in 2005 for this play. Her adapted screenplay of
A Number was shown on BBC TV in September 2008. The play
Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006) takes a critical look at what she sees as Britain's submission to the United States in foreign policy. In 2010, Churchill was commissioned to write the
libretto for a new short opera by
Orlando Gough, as part of the
Royal Opera House's ROH2 OperaShots initiative. The resulting work,
A ring a lamp a thing, played for five performances in the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House. Her play
Love and Information opened at the Royal Court Theatre in September 2012, directed by
James Macdonald. It was well-received by critics. The play, featuring 100 characters and performed by a cast of 15, is structured as a series of more than 50 fragmented scenes, some no longer than 25 seconds, all of which are apparently unrelated but which accumulate into a startling mosaic, a portrayal of modern consciousness and the need for human intimacy, love and connection. The play had its regional premiere at Sheffield Theatres in June 2018, directed by Caroline Steinbeis.
Ding Dong the Wicked (2013) has been described as a companion piece to
Love and Information.
Charles Spencer said in
The Telegraph that the work is "little more than a clever dramatic exercise" but "nags away in the memory long after you have left the theatre". Matthew Tucker gave the
Royal Court Theatre performance three out of five stars, dubbed the play "snappy", and wrote, "Some may find this latest offering terse and obscure, however, in the spirit of explorative theatre,
Ding Dong The Wicked is an intriguing and satisfying production." A reviewer for the
Evening Standard argued: "What it all means is food for later reflection, but as always Churchill seems inventive, coolly socialist, bleak yet dazzling, a bit of a shaman. Although her technique sounds gimmicky, it works." Conversely,
The Guardians Michael Billington wrote that the work "feels as if it's cramming a trunkload of ideas into a tiny vanity case [...] the tightness of the format means there is no room to explore the source of so much private and public fury, or to differentiate between one society and another. In short, the play is too generalised to make any strong emotional impact." The Royal Court Theatre premiere of
Pigs and Dogs received a positive review in
The Stage and moderately positive reviews in
The Guardian,
The Observer, and
Evening Standard, with the last newspaper's
Henry Hitchings stating: "While the incantatory style isn't consistently engaging, this is a striking parade of views on a subject that merits more sustained treatment." Andrzej Lukowski of
Time Out said in a three-star review that the play "makes its point effectively if tersely".
Mark Lawson of
The Guardian praised
Beautiful Eyes as a "sharp" comedy. In 2025, four one-act plays (
Glass,
Kill,
What If If Only and
Imp) were presented together at the Public Theater in New York City, under the portmanteau title
Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.. Directed by James Macdonald, this production marked the first time all four plays were presented together.
Glass,
Kill, and
Imp were first presented by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre on September 18, 2019.
What If If Only was first presented by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre on September 29, 2021.
What If If Only had its North American premiere in 2021 with remote live performances presented by the National Asian American Theatre Company, realized by Les Waters and Jared Mezzocchi.
Translations Churchill has published translations of
Seneca's
Thyestes,
Olivier Choinière's
Bliss (Félicité), and
August Strindberg's
A Dream Play. Her version of
A Dream Play was premiered at the National Theatre in 2005.
Retrospective The
Royal Court Theatre held a 70th-birthday retrospective of her work by presenting readings of many of her most famous plays directed by notable playwrights, including
Martin Crimp and
Mark Ravenhill. ==Personal life==