On Caryl Churchill's Omissions, or, How little do we need to hear to know what's going on?

How does an artist decide what to omit? How does a reader or spectator know what has been omitted in the process of creating a work? How does omission prompt acts of imagination in response to that which might have been omitted? This essay explores the modalities of knowledge in relation to theatre as artwork or aesthetic object. Through a reading of Caryl Churchill's late work that relates these plays to an understanding of drama as essentially sculptural, it explores omission as technique and praxis to think through the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of a poetics of omission. Churchill's ethical commitments are shown to be inseparable from her aesthetic choices, even – or especially – in the most politically charged contexts.