" [In Cloud Nine] the audience's interpretation relies far more on reading signs in contradiction than in combination [...] The overt theatricality of Churchill's presentation works against a conventional reliance on plot and character and instead asks more general operations of cultural values." (Susan Bennett) Explore the interaction of these two idea (signs in contradiction, questioning of audience assumptions) through a close reading of the text Cloud Nine in performance.
             The groundbreaking play Cloud Nine by Churchill was first performed on the 14 of February 1979 by the Joint Stock Theatre Group at the Dartington College of Arts. The play, which was, then in shown America in 1983 was devised from a series of workshops Churchill did with the company. This use of devising scripts in workshops showed Churchill's ease to use ground unconventional techniques in the writing and development of the play. This is a key factor in the audience's assumptions of what the playwrights will present to the audience. The facts that the play was performed in the Dartington College of Arts for it's first performance and not a more traditional theatre venue and by the fact that the Joint Stock Theatre company are seen in The Concise Companion to Theatre (oxford 1992), which put the Joint Stock Theatre Company under the section of fringe theatre (page 172). This overall background must have given the audience an idea that the theatre they where about to watch was not of conventional style. Thus for this performance and other performances of the play there is always a expectancy from the audience that the Churchill play they are about to witness will not be of naturalistic conventional style.
             However if you are working on the premise that the audience has no prior knowledge of Churchill's works the way in which the play open already opens up the minds of the audience by the having cross gender and cross co...