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 prominent and imposing statesmen and politicians, with his characteristic self-irony and sarcasm. He not only drank whisky and smoked Cuban cigars, but also advocated the idea of a European Union in his time, coined the term “Iron Curtain” and, in 1953, received the 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. The play Churchill (2015), a mosaic of memories by American actor and playwright Ronald Keaton, invites us into Winston Churchill’s inner world. Giving free rein to his passion for painting, Churchill creates his own subjective biography, in which events etched into the annals of history sit alongside intimate moments precious only to him. “Ronald Keaton’s play is an emotionally told story of a historical figure and the role of the individual in an era of global geopolitical upheaval. Parallels with events today allow us to view it through the lens of history. It is an open conversation about the end of a politician’s life, old age and what he accomplished in politics,” says director Reinis Suhanovs.