Owners (play)

{{Short description|1972 play by Caryl Churchill}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox play

| name = Owners

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| writer = Caryl Churchill

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| premiere = {{start date|1972|12|6|df=y}}

| place = Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London

| orig_lang = English

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Owners is a 1972 play by British playwright Caryl Churchill.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/nyregion/a-review-of-owners-at-yale-repertory-theater.html|title=The Implications of Ownership: A Review of 'Owners,' at Yale Repertory Theater|last=Gold|first=Sylviane|date=November 7, 2013|work=The New York Times|accessdate=21 January 2017}} It was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre's Theatre Upstairs in a production directed by Nicholas Wright.{{cite book |last1=Churchill |first1=Caryl |title=Churchill Plays: 1: Owners; Traps; Vinegar Tom; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire; Cloud Nine |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury Methuen Drama |isbn=978-0-413-56670-6 |page=xi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MW5jAgAAQBAJ&dq=Churchill%20plays%201&pg=PR11 |access-date=12 August 2021}}{{cite news |last1=Mark Ravenhill |title=She made us raise our game |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/sep/03/carylchurchill.theatre |accessdate=11 July 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=3 September 2008|author1-link=Mark Ravenhill }} The play is a satire of property rights about real estate and of the people who own real estate and those who live in rented accommodation.{{cite web|url=http://www.sfgate.com/performance/article/Critic-s-pick-Caryl-Churchill-s-Owners-3189194.php|title=Critic's pick: Caryl Churchill's 'Owners'|date=May 9, 2010|publisher=San Francisco Chronicle|accessdate=19 February 2017}}

Owners was Churchill's first professionally produced stage play, and she has described the play as a turning-point in her career as a dramatist: "Since Owners I've worked almost entirely in the theatre. So my working life feels divided quite sharply into before and after 1972, and Owners was the first play of the second part."

In New Haven Register, E. Kyle Minor described Owners as an "intermittently interesting and otherwise tedious" work that was written before Churchill had become a genius of theater.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nhregister.com/entertainment/article/Caryl-Churchill-s-Owners-at-Yale-Rep-11400500.php|title=Caryl Churchill's 'Owners' at Yale Rep expends its capital before the play's conclusion|last=Minor|first=E. Kyle|date=2013-10-31|website=New Haven Register|access-date=2020-03-18}} Sylviane Gold of The New York Times stated that "she had yet to achieve the formal mastery that would make later plays like “Cloud Nine” and “Top Girls” instant modernist classics", but argued that Churchill's "acidic critique of capitalist freebooters and the culture that worships them as heroes carries even more resonance today than it did in 1972".{{Cite news|last=Gold|first=Sylviane|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/nyregion/a-review-of-owners-at-yale-repertory-theater.html|title=The Implications of Ownership|date=2013-11-07|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-03-18|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}

The play was revived at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2023 directed by the theatre's Artistic Director Stella Powell-Jones.{{Cite web |title=Owners {{!}} Jermyn Street Theatre |url=https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/owners/ |access-date=2025-02-11}}