Academic literature on the topic 'Caryl Churchill'

This doctoral dissertation approaches three plays written by British playwright Caryl Churchill (1938- ): <i>Cloud Nine</i> (1979), <i>Top Girls</i> (1982), and <i>Blue Heart</i> (1997). Her plays deal mainly with systems of oppression and their effects on the individual or on groups of people. These systems of oppression, reminiscent of the Foucauldian power structures, exert their restrictive power over the dispossessed -the working class, women, or gays and lesbians. <br/><br/>The main objective of this dissertation is to demonostrate how a gender and politics-oriented approach to theatre can help to subvert some of the patriarchal and conservative assumptions implicit in traditional theatre. In this respect, the three plays analysed share the presence of recurrent themes: patriarchal society, the nuclear family, colonisation at several levels (race, gender, sexuality), and the capitalist system.

This thesis is primarily concerned with Caryl Churchill and Edward Bond&rsquo<br>s attempts to implement Brechtian methods of Verfremdungseffekt with the same artistic intent of social change in their plays, Mad Forest and Red, Black and Ignorant. In order to provoke critical and objective thinking, and action for positive change, both of the playwrights make use of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt techniques of characterization, open-endedness, episodic structure, and audio-visual aids. These techniques let the playwrights present familiar situations, actions and attitudes as if they were unfamiliar so that they could be alienated and evaluated with a critical eye by the audience and the reader. In addition to studying the Brechtian elements in these two plays, this thesis argues that there is a point which drifts Bond&rsquo<br>s Red, Black and Ignorant from Brechtian dramaturgy and Churchill&rsquo<br>s Mad Forest<br>the point is that Red, Black and Ignorant includes non-Brechtian character design aspects and lack of Brechtian audio-visual aids.

JUDGE: Go away Barbara. I've had enough. Should we all be kind? You are lukewarm and will be vomited. There are two camps, Barbara, mine and theirs. Either you are with, or you are against. Although English playwright Caryl Churchill wrote the three scripts examined in this thesis more than thirty years ago, each captures our contemporary zeitgeist in sometimes surprising ways. These works explore the shifting politics of power, revealing binary and essentialist representations that not only continue but have been strengthened on all sides in recent years, suggesting their central importance in defining and controlling culture. This thesis examines how Churchill subverts conventional forms of representation and probes the ways in which she herself has been represented by critics and scholars at various periods of her writing career. It is my contention that these processes operate in tandem, performing an ongoing dialogue. Because of the dynamic nature of this dialogue, the aim here is not so much to provide an increasingly unified or finite understanding of the artistic milieu from which a play emerges, as it is to recognize the level of complexity underlying the mutable and political process of its interpretation. I have undertaken a detailed exploration of three lesser-known short scripts from 1972, a 'watershed' year for Churchill, culminating in the relative success of Owners, her first major stage play. While many of her earlier works have been deserving of further exploration, a number of them have been largely overlooked in the broader environment of her subsequent contribution to contemporary theatre. The particular scripts that I explore in the course of this thesis are: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution; Schreber's Nervous Illness and The Judge's Wife, an unperformed stage play, a radio play and a television play respectively. These works are worthy of exploration because of their experiments with the politics of subjectivity as it impacts on race, gender and social class, and notions of 'legitimacy' that shift with a person's changing circumstances. Each of these plays implicitly demonstrates the importance of subjectivity in relation to representational power as it places characters who have traditionally been silenced at the centre of the action. I have titled my thesis Caryl Churchill: Representational Negotiations and Provisional Truths. In invoking this title I pre-empt the engagement of a subjective, strategic essentialist approach, both in critiquing this period of Churchill's work and in declaring the assumptions of the arguments contained in the pages that follow.

JUDGE: Go away Barbara. I've had enough. Should we all be kind? You are lukewarm and will be vomited. There are two camps, Barbara, mine and theirs. Either you are with, or you are against. Although English playwright Caryl Churchill wrote the three scripts examined in this thesis more than thirty years ago, each captures our contemporary zeitgeist in sometimes surprising ways. These works explore the shifting politics of power, revealing binary and essentialist representations that not only continue but have been strengthened on all sides in recent years, suggesting their central importance in defining and controlling culture. This thesis examines how Churchill subverts conventional forms of representation and probes the ways in which she herself has been represented by critics and scholars at various periods of her writing career. It is my contention that these processes operate in tandem, performing an ongoing dialogue. Because of the dynamic nature of this dialogue, the aim here is not so much to provide an increasingly unified or finite understanding of the artistic milieu from which a play emerges, as it is to recognize the level of complexity underlying the mutable and political process of its interpretation. I have undertaken a detailed exploration of three lesser-known short scripts from 1972, a 'watershed' year for Churchill, culminating in the relative success of Owners, her first major stage play. While many of her earlier works have been deserving of further exploration, a number of them have been largely overlooked in the broader environment of her subsequent contribution to contemporary theatre. The particular scripts that I explore in the course of this thesis are: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution; Schreber's Nervous Illness and The Judge's Wife, an unperformed stage play, a radio play and a television play respectively. These works are worthy of exploration because of their experiments with the politics of subjectivity as it impacts on race, gender and social class, and notions of 'legitimacy' that shift with a person's changing circumstances. Each of these plays implicitly demonstrates the importance of subjectivity in relation to representational power as it places characters who have traditionally been silenced at the centre of the action. I have titled my thesis Caryl Churchill: Representational Negotiations and Provisional Truths. In invoking this title I pre-empt the engagement of a subjective, strategic essentialist approach, both in critiquing this period of Churchill's work and in declaring the assumptions of the arguments contained in the pages that follow.

Esta tesis explora la poética de la dramaturga inglesa Caryl Churchill (1938), una de las figuras fundamentales de la dramaturgia inglesa contemporánea. Su capacidad para articular de forma innovadora la relación entre forma y contenido será objeto de nuestro estudio.Hemos dividido nuestro estudio en tres grandes bloques. Nuestra primera ocupación se centra en las minorías, los excluidos. La figura del Otro es uno de los grandes temas y ocupaciones de Churchill. La autora explora la conversión en realidades fantasmáticas del Otro. Churchill analiza los fantasmas y las realidades fantasmáticas que detecta en la contemporaneidad. En los dos primeros capítulos, a partir de los análisis de Vinegar Tom y The Hospital At the Time of the Revolution, veremos cómo realiza su exploración de las minorías a partir de los procesos en que fueron construidas. Colocaremos nuestra mirada y la suya sobre la Historia colectiva e individual como fantasma, el individuo como fantasma, a partir de A Number, y el Estado como fantasma con la obra Mad Forest. Y observaremos que tipos de presencias fantasmáticas lleva a escena, misión para la que Churchill llega a deconstruir el concepto de presencia, en la pieza Hotel. Cierra la primera parte Seven Jewish Children, una pieza breve donde Churchill concentra los análisis anteriores. En la pieza hallamos a la vida misma desposeída. Ésta se convierte en un espacio concentrado de todo lo simulacral. La segunda parte de este estudio explora el papel del lenguaje en la obra de Caryl Churchill. Veremos: cómo explora la relación entre significante y significado, su proyecto de representar lo irrepresentable y cómo lo lleva a cabo, su interés por lenguajes y estructuras de otros ámbitos que traslada a la literatura dramática y al teatro, por ejemplo en Traps, la relación entre semejanza y similitud, en This is a Chair; y finalmente, las consecuencias de la pérdida de las marcas en las cosas, en Heart’s Desire: pérdida señalada por Foucault en Las palabras y las cosas. Churchill también aproxima el balbuceo infantil con lo senil. Reconfigura sonoramente el lenguaje y pone en evidencia que: el lenguaje del mundo está dañado a partir de The Skriker. El tercer bloque de este estudio gira en torno a ese gran asunto: el capitalismo y las relaciones despersonalizadas que crea. Nos interesaremos por alguno de sus diversos orígenes. En Light Shining in Buchkinghamshire, acudimos a un momento particular de la historia de Inglaterra, un momento lleno de esperanza donde todo era posible pero en el que la revolución no llegó a suceder al ser traicionada por la propiedad. Continuaremos con el examen de la bipartición de la sociedad creada entre propietarios y desposeídos siguiendo esquemas religiosos. Esta relación sella un nuevo tipo de vínculos entre los individuos que Churchill dramatiza en Owners. A continuación asistimos a la pérdida del referente real entre los signos monetarios, donde estos pasan a volar libremente. Pretendemos esclarecer los significados del sistema de la “propiedad” en la obra de la autora inglesa y las consecuencias, que muestra Churchill, del sistema capitalista en la creación de esta época difusa que es la contemporaneidad y la globalización. Este nuevo mundo toma la forma de un gran musical en la obra dramática Serious Money. Después de las revoluciones capitalistas correspondientes y su desarrollo, se llega al capitalismo avanzado; paradigma fundamental en la globalización, en Drunk Enough to say I LoveYou?, última pieza de nuestro análisis.<br>This thesis explores the poetics of the English playwright Caryl Churchill (1938), one of the essential figures of the English contemporary dramaturgy. Her aptitude to articulate in an innovative way the relationship between form and content will be the object of our study. We have divided this work in three big blocks. Our first occupation is about the minorities, the excluded ones. The figure of the Other is one of the main topics of Churchill. The playwright explores the conversion of the Otherinto different phantasmatic realities. Churchill analyses the ghosts and the phantasmatic realities that she detects in the contemporaneousness. In the first two chapters, from the analysis of Vinegar Tom and The Hospital At the Time of the Revolution, we will see how she carries outthe exploration of the minorities throughout the processes in which they were constructed. We will place our look and hers on the collective and individual History as a ghost, the individual as a ghost, in the playA Number; and the State as a ghost in the play Mad Forest. And we will observe which phantasmatic presences she leads to the scene. For this mission, Churchill even deconstructs the concept of presence in the play Hotel. The first part ends with Seven Jewish Children, a brief play where Churchill concentrates the previously mentioned analyses. In this play we find the life itself dispossessed. It turns into a concentrated space of everything that is simulated. The second part of this study explores the role of language in Caryl Churchill’s work. We will see: how she explores the relation between significant and meaning, her project to represent the non-representable and how she carries it out, her interest for languages and structures of other areas, which she moves to the dramatic literature and the theatre, for example in Traps, the relation between similitude and resemblance, in This is a Chair; and finally, the consequences of the loss of the brands in the things, in Heart's Desire: loss distinguished by Foucault in The words and the things. Churchill also brings near the infantile babbling to the senile one. She re-forms sonorously the language and reveals that: the language of the world is damaged, as we can see in The Skriker. The third block of this study turns around this great matter: the capitalism and the depersonalized relationships that it generates. We will be interested in some of its several origins. In Light Shining in Buchkinghamshire, we come to a particular moment in the history of England. A moment full of hope, where everything was possible but where the revolution did not manage to happen, because it was betrayed by the property. We will continue with the examination of the division created between owners and landless, following religious schemes. This relationship seals new types of links amongst the individuals that Churchill dramatizes in Owners. Later on, we are present during the loss of the real model amongst the monetary signs, where they start to fly freely. We try to clarify the meanings of the system of "property" in the work of the English playwright and the consequences of the capitalist system in the creation of this diffused era that is the contemporaneousness and the globalization, as Churchill shows. This new world takes the form of a great musical in the play Serious Money. After the corresponding capitalist revolutions and their development, we arrive to the advanced capitalism: essential paradigm in globalization, as seen in Drunk Enough to say I Love You?, last play of our analysis.

This thesis evaluates Caryl Churchill&#039<br>s criticism of culturally defined roles imposed by patriarchy on both sexes in her three plays Owners, Cloud Nine, and Top Girls by referring to Kate Millet&#039<br>s defination of aspects of patriarchal ideology in Sexual Poitics, and the thesis contends that gender roles are arbitrary. Churchill&#039<br>s attempt to draw attention to patriarchal essentialism is discussed within this framework.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-08T16:52:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 123973.pdf: 2284353 bytes, checksum: bb77326a8d3f3be018ec7cd882b3b6ad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-11<br>Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior<br>O presente trabalho pretende analisar o texto teatral Sete Crianças Judias de Caryl Churchill como um jogo de profanação política. Escrita em 2009, a obra é uma resposta artística e política da autora à operação militar israelense ocorrida em Gaza em 2008/09 e gerou fortes repercussões no mundo todo, inclusive acusações de antissemitismo. O texto é analisado em seu caráter híbrido que transita entre gêneros líricos e épicos, e entre formas dramáticas/melodramáticas e formas não mais dramáticas. Assim, a estrutura formal será abordada a partir da ideia de texto rapsódico, proposta por Sarrazac (2002). A partir do conceito tradicional de jogo conforme Huizinga (2000) e Caillois (1990), e suas correlações com a forma dramática absoluta, a primeira cena é compreendida como a proposição de um jogo melodramático localizado em um passado longínquo. Acordo esse que não será cumprido. Para compreender o jogo proposto pela autora, recorro a três autores principais. 1 - A visão de jogo infinito de Carse (1986) para descrever o dispositivo de abertura temporal e o descumprimento do acordo melodramático. 2- A noção de Gadamer (1999) sobre a capacidade do jogo de mobilizar e transformar indivíduo e sociedade para descrever os dispositivos de deslocamento e mobilizações intra e extraficcionais do texto. 3- A provocação de Agamben (2007), ao eleger como tarefa política do jogo o ato profanador. Nesse trabalho sustento a hipótese de que Sete Crianças Judias profana simbolicamente o uso consagrado do gênero melodramático para a manutenção de uma moralidade instituída, do uso da concepção moderna do imaginário da criança como objeto de justificativa da guerra, e do caráter mítico do discurso histórico oficial israelense.

Caryl Churchill’s play, Love and Information, presents a shift in focus from unstable personal and political identity towards unstable logical identity, a philosophical concept that takes identity out of the realm of identity politics.. As a new play Love and Information has understandably been subject to very little scholarly analysis. This thesis situates the play within Churchill’s corpus in order to consider how the depersonalized identities of this play fit within the broader scope of Churchill’s work. Anchored in Elin Diamond’s study of gender identity in Churchill’s corpus, this thesis will further incorporate theories of logical identity as well as theories of language in order to define what I argue is Churchill’s shift towards logical identity. Through a study of both the text of Love and Information and the 2014 New York première, I conclude that Love and Information represents a shift in focus while Churchill maintains her playwriting methodology.