ABSTRACT
The process of researching, writing and experiencing performances of Mad Forest in England and in Romania in 1990 was perhaps the most politically and artistically self-confrontational venture that Churchill has undertaken. Churchill's play comes at these living nightmares obliquely, the form in itself suggestive of double lives, hidden torments, enforced silences and nagging uncertainties. Churchill took the unusual step of publishing extracts of her diary in The Guardian in order to convey the strange privilege of presenting a fiction of the revolution to those who had lived through it only nine months earlier. Wing-Davey was convinced of the importance of the effect of material discomfort for the audience, but concrete blocks were replaced by differently sized chairs, some spectators seated close to the floor and others raised up higher. The Romanian revolution may now be more than two decades away, but regime change and revolution are rarely out of the news, making Mad Forest an enduringly resonant and remarkable play.
