PlayMakers takes on cloning in Caryl Churchill’s 'A Number'

At the beginning of Caryl Churchill’s play “A Number,” a 35-year-old man discovers there are three of him.

The play — which centers on a father who clones his son — is the first of PlayMakers Repertory Company’s PRC2 season.

But Director Mike Donahue said the play isn’t just about clones — if it’s about clones at all.

“It’s often considered a play about cloning, but the word is never used in the play once,” he said.

Not only does the script lack the word “clone,” but also a precise setting, offering an exciting challenge for the director and actors.

“From the few clues that are in the text, we developed a very specific imaginative world that we do our best to inhabit,” said Ray Dooley, a UNC professor of dramatic art who plays the father in “A Number.”

Donahue said this ambiguity enriched the rehearsal process.

“At the beginning of rehearsals we had nothing to hold on to, but as we went on we made ground rules for the world,” Donahue said.

“We’re still making new discoveries.”

When the play’s two-person cast — actor Josh Barrett plays all of the clones — first read through the script, it found a crucial component of the characters’ world: it takes place at a kitchen table.

“I’ve seen some productions of this play where the world is really art-y and that’s not quite right, because these are real people,” Donahue said. “But for us, it’s a kitchen-table kind of play.”

In each scene, Dooley sits across the table from a different clone of his son. He said acting with one other actor as three different characters was a challenge.

“The visual signals that one usually gets from different characters are not as strong,” he said.

But Dooley said that differentiated costumes and Barrett’s strong acting ensure the individuality of each character.

“We do see that this is a different human being — how he speaks, his physical mannerisms, what he wears and how he wears his hair,” Dooley said.

Jeffrey Meanza, associate artistic director for PlayMakers, said he’s been attracted to Caryl Churchill’s plays for years.

“She’s really willing to ask big questions even if they can be kind of painful,” he said.

Though cloning isn’t as much of a hot-button topic as it was when the play was written in 2002, Meanza and Donahue said they are eager for the discussions after each performance — a hallmark of the PRC2 series.

Donahue said he predicts the discussions will vary each night.
“The same audience can watch it twice and walk away with completely different ideas about what the truth is,” he said.

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