Top Girls – Lesson 1

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Transcript Top Girls – Lesson 1

Starter – What do you know about life in England in the

1970s/1980s?

Think about:

-) Who was prime minister?

-) What was the economy like?

-) What rights did men and women have? Were they equal?

Learning Objective – to explore the historical and social context of the play ‘Top Girls’ by Caryl Churchill.

Task: In pairs you are going to have an information sheet about Margaret Thatcher and her influence as prime minister.

You have 10 minutes to read the information and then on the back of the page choose the FIVE most important facts and re-write them in your own words. Let’s share our important facts …

Britain in the 1970s witnessed a profound change in the consciousness of women as a group. Can you think of any Acts that might have been passed to help women?

1967 – The Abortion Act 1969 – Divorce Reform Act 1970 – The Equal Pay Act 1974 – Contraceptive was made freely available 1975 – Sex Discrimination Act

Why do you think these changes were made?

The Women's Liberation Movement

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learn ingzone/clips/what-was-the womens-liberation movement/3735.html

The Women’s Liberation Movement was particularly keen on supporting the interests of women in: -) The Civil Service -) Industry -) Medicine -) Broadcasting – as newsreaders/presenters/interviewers

Who is Caryl Churchill?

Caryl Churchill, author of "Top Girls", was born in 1938 and spent most of her childhood years in London and Montreal. In 1957 she entered the prestigious Oxford University to study English Literature, and it was there that she first developed her strong interest in drama. Before receiving her degree in 1960, Churchill had already published and produced three plays.

Soon after, she became well known as a radio dramatist. Her job with the radio producers served as an important training ground during the 1960s. Churchill wrote many scripts for BBC radio drama until the early 1970s. Meanwhile, she married a man named David Harter and gave birth to three children between 1963 and 1969. Her career as a radio dramatist proved very successful and between 1962 and 1973 she produced eight plays that actively enabled the listener to see and imagine the drama that Churchill so aptly displayed through a good choice of dialogue, music, and sound effects. Then, she made the transition to theater and television in 1972, contributing six new plays to BBC by 1981.

However, Churchill soon came to the conclusion that television work was very unsatisfactory compared to theater work, where she was free to write without the pressures of politics and society. In 1972 she got her chance to work with the Royal Court Theatre, which helped bring her into the sphere of the politically daring and artistically committed theatre of "The Court" (Kritzer, pg 61). In 1975 Churchill became the first woman to hold the position of resident dramatist, where she was able to constantly test the limits and vitality of traditional and orthodox theatre.

Why did she write ‘Top Girls’?

The ideas for Top Girls came from all kinds of things. A lot of it went back a really long way. The idea for Dull Gret as a character I found in some old notebook from 1977 or ’78. There’d been the idea of a play about a lot of dead women having coffee with someone from the present. And an idea about women doing all kinds of jobs. It was also that Thatcher had just become prime minister; and also I had been to America for a student production of Vinegar Tom and I had been talking to women there who were saying things were going very well: they were getting far more women executives, women vice presidents and so on. And that was such a different attitude from anything I’d ever met here, where feminism tends to be much more connected with socialism and not so much to do with women succeeding on the sort of capitalist ladder. All of those ideas fed into Top Girls.

Churchill’s Questions

‘Playwrights don’t give answers, they ask questions.’ She asks quite a few questions in ‘Top Girls’ which we need to answer for ourselves.

In Top Girls she asks, 'is it more important to break out of a cycle of poverty and ‘make something of yourself’, or to fulfil your responsibilities to your family and community?

If you are a woman, are you more likely to answer this question in a certain way?

How can a woman balance the demands of a career and motherhood?

What actually constitutes success in life?

Top Girls has become emblematic of contemporary woman’s struggle!

Churchill wrote the play as a response to the election of Margaret Thatcher.

Some thought that her rise to power in politics was as indicative of progress for women.

Churchill worried that Thatcher’s right wing politics benefited a minority of wealthy Britons while leaving the less fortunate behind.

The play voices her concerns regarding social emphasis on capitalist success over sisterly solidarity.

To confront the era’s broad ranging political dilemmas, she compares and contrasts the lives of two sisters.

Before you go …