Churchill

“I am ready to meet my Creator, but whether my Creator is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter,” said Winston Churchill (1874–1965), one of Britain’s most notable and imposing statesmen and politicians, with his characteristic self-irony and sarcasm. He not only drank whisky and smoked Cuban cigars, but also championed the idea of the European Union in his own time, coined the term “Iron Curtain,” and received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his speeches that inspired nations and for his memoirs. A self-made man*—from a stuttering boy to a decisive strategist, never giving up his human weaknesses either. American actor and playwright Ronald Keaton’s play Churchill (2015), a mosaic of memories, invites us into Winston Churchill’s inner world. Giving in to his passion for painting, Churchill creates his own subjective biography, in which events etched into the annals of history sit alongside intimate moments dear only to him. “Ronald Keaton’s play is an emotional story about a historical figure and the role of the individual in an era of global geopolitical transformations. Parallels with processes unfolding today allow us to view it through the filter of history. It is an open conversation about the end of a politician’s life, old age and what he achieved in politics,” says director Reinis Suhanovs.