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
The Women's Liberation Movement
Why do you
think these
changes
were made?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learn
ingzone/clips/what-was-thewomens-liberationmovement/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 …
Learning Objective – to explore
the historical and social context of
the play ‘Top Girls’ by Caryl
Churchill.
What do you think the play is
going to be about?
Why?
What have
you learnt
about life
in England?
What have
you learnt
about Caryl
Churchill?