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1
Monforte, Enric. "Gender, Politics, Subjectivity: Reading Caryl Churchill." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/1659.
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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.
2
Yonkul, Ayse. "A Brechtian Analysis Of Caryl Churchill." Master's thesis, METU, 2013. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615391/index.pdf.
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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.
3
Lavell, Iris. "Caryl Churchill : representational negotiations and provisional truths /." Lavell, Iris (2004) Caryl Churchill: representational negotiations and provisional truths. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/146/.
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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.
4
Lavell, Iris Joy. "Caryl Churchill: Representational negotiations and provisional truths." Thesis, Lavell, Iris Joy (2004) Caryl Churchill: Representational negotiations and provisional truths. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/146/.
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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.
5
Chang, Yih-Fan. "Caryl Churchill : the playwright, her work, and its context." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.283138.
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Ferrando, Luquin Silvia. "Las dramaturgias de Caryl Churchill. El mundo y sus sombras." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/385735.
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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.
7
Firat, Serap. "Caryl Churchill And Gender Roles: Owners, Cloud Nine, Top Girls." Master's thesis, METU, 2005. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12606786/index.pdf.
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This thesis evaluates Caryl Churchill'<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'<br>s defination of aspects of patriarchal ideology in Sexual Poitics, and the thesis contends that gender roles are arbitrary. Churchill'<br>s attempt to draw attention to patriarchal essentialism is discussed within this framework.
8
Oliveira, Júnior Antonio Carlos de. "Jogos de profanação dramatúrgicos : sete crianças judias de Caryl Churchill." Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, 2015. http://tede.udesc.br/handle/handle/1298.
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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.
9
Pocock, Stephanie J. Russell Richard Rankin. "Between reality and mystery : food as fact and symbol in plays by Ibsen and Churchill /." Waco, Tex. : Baylor University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/4875.
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Gowans, Caitlin. "Unstable Identity in Caryl Churchill's Love and Information." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31555.
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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.
11
Adiseshiah, Sian Helen. "Theory, politics and cultural practice in the plays of Caryl Churchill." Thesis, Online version, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.274420.
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Morelli, Henriette M. "Somebody sings, Brechtian epic devices in the plays of Caryl Churchill." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0010/NQ27419.pdf.
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Whitaker, Laura Leigh. ""Unstable subjects" gender and agency in Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 /." Auburn, Ala., 2007. http://repo.lib.auburn.edu/2007%20Spring%20Theses/WHITAKER_LAURA_29.pdf.
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Kelly, Helen. "The use of dramatic structural models in selected Caryl Churchill stage plays." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.633210.
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This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which Caryl Churchill has utilised existing dramatic structural models in six of her text-based stage plays. The study takes the three dramaturgical models most commonly found in Churchill's work, Brechtian epic, farce and absurdism and examines how the playwright appropriates these, adapting them to new content, and ultimately subverting them; transmuting their qualities into new innovative form. The study asserts the right of the playwright to use all of the dramaturgical knowledge at her* disposal against a background of theoretical writing, some of which attempts to attach an ethical or moral status to individual dramaturgical theories. This study concludes that no dramaturgical form is inherently moral or immoral, rather, it is the context in which it is used that determines the success and ethical status of a dramatic structural form in any given piece of drama.
15
Joseph, Mary Beatrice. "Comic techniques and the comic spirit in selected plays of Caryl Churchill." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185517.
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Critics have often viewed Caryl Churchill as a comic playwright but have never analysed her methods and materials. I made a study of her plays in order to uncover the comic techniques she uses, find out why she chooses to use comedy when her themes are so serious and painful, and decipher whether or not she is part of the continuum of literary comic tradition. My study of Top Girls, Cloud 9, Vinegar Tom, Light Shining In Buckinghamshire, Fen and Owners reveals that Churchill makes extensive use of structural principles of the sort employed by the great masters and described by theorists throughout the history of stage comedy.
16
Biber, Yeliz. "Visions of the future in the plays of Caryl Churchill and Maria Irene Fornes." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.496550.
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Maera, Claudia. "Carnivalesque disruptions and political theatre : plays by Dario Fo, Franca Rame, and Caryl Churchill." Thesis, University of Reading, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299610.
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Grossetti, Adam Gordon. "It made you feel what? Using structure to convey theme : playscript and exegesis." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2007. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16630/1/Adam_Grossetti_-_3606202.pdf.
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The exegesis and accompanying playscript 3606202 is concerned with how the structural framework of a play might be manipulated to help deliver a writer's response to global events. The exegesis looks at examples of writers who have responded to global events over the last several decades and examines as a case study the structure of Caryl Churchill's play Far Away. The writer then applies a similar structural blueprint to the writing of his play 3606202 and reflects on the outcomes such a structure achieved. As part of this reflection, the exegesis explores how the writer's desire to respond to global events led him to consider the impacts of structure on the sub-textual articulation of themes within a playscript. The exegesis concludes by detailing the findings of an experiment conducted at the reading of his play and its professional presentation within the Wharf2Loud season at the Sydney Theatre Company.
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Grossetti, Adam Gordon. "It made you feel what? Using structure to convey theme : playscript and exegesis." Queensland University of Technology, 2007. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16630/.
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The exegesis and accompanying playscript 3606202 is concerned with how the structural framework of a play might be manipulated to help deliver a writer's response to global events. The exegesis looks at examples of writers who have responded to global events over the last several decades and examines as a case study the structure of Caryl Churchill's play Far Away. The writer then applies a similar structural blueprint to the writing of his play 3606202 and reflects on the outcomes such a structure achieved. As part of this reflection, the exegesis explores how the writer's desire to respond to global events led him to consider the impacts of structure on the sub-textual articulation of themes within a playscript. The exegesis concludes by detailing the findings of an experiment conducted at the reading of his play and its professional presentation within the Wharf2Loud season at the Sydney Theatre Company.
20
Spiller, Erica. "COLLABORATION OF FEMINIST AND POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSES IN THE PLAYS OF APHRA BEHN AND CARYL CHURCHILL." VCU Scholars Compass, 2009. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1692.
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Subjugated groups studied by discourses of feminism and postcolonialism are commonly oppressed by white, male, imperial power systems. As different marginalized groups are exploited by the same dominant ideology the disparate discourses should collaborate in an attempt to fight the powers of oppression en masse. This thesis will explore not only how feminism and postcolonialism should collaborate, but that they have already been doing so for hundreds of years. In the seventeenth century the playwright Aphra Behn was already exploring the discourses as inseparable, and three-hundred-years later, playwright Caryl Churchill continues to do the same. By studying conventions of drama throughout various theatre movements, such as Restoration and Epic theatre, I will show how class, gender, and race have always been cultural issues as long as Britain has had imperial status.
21
Ivanchenko, Andriy. "Overlapping dialogue in three plays by Caryl Churchill : an interactive approach to some features of conversation." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.446177.
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Rundle, Pip. "The unburiable: Representations of pain and violence in selected works of Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill." Thesis, Rundle, Pip (2011) The unburiable: Representations of pain and violence in selected works of Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill. Honours thesis, Murdoch University, 2011. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/6635/.
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In this thesis I intend to answer the question of how representations of pain and violence in the selected plays of Kane and Churchill assist the critical understanding of those works. The works I have selected are Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A play for Gaza. To assist the understanding of the spectator and to enable me to engage with the plays in closer detail I draw on a selection of theories from the philosophers Judith Butler and Arne Johan Vetlesen. In particular I discuss Butler’s theorisation of grief, vulnerability and responsibility to (and for) the Other. I also discuss Vetlesen’s responses to pain and torture, with emphasis on his notions of pain transference. From my reading and analysis of the plays, I find that both works provoke a complex set of responses to issues of communal responsibility and identity. The reference in the title to ‘the unburiable’ is a term coined by Butler to explain the efforts of some people to dehumanise the Other. Applying the theoretical ideas of Butler and Vetlesen to the plays provides a way to negotiate the fragile gap between those that matter and those who have become the unburiable.
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Peacock, Martin Henry. "Five approaches to political theatre : Howard Brenton, David Hare, David Edgar, Roger Howard, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker." Thesis, Loughborough University, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.291727.
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Albayrak, Gokhan. "Gender And Sexuality In Three British Plays: Cloud Nine By Caryl Churchill, My Beautiful Laundrette By Hanif Kureishi, The Invention Of Love By Tom Stoppard." Master's thesis, METU, 2009. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610691/index.pdf.
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This thesis analyzes how gender and sexual identities are discursively constructed through Churchill&rsquo<br>s Cloud Nine, Kureishi&rsquo<br>s My Beautiful Laundrette and Stoppard&rsquo<br>s The Invention of Love<br>it traces how the dominant discourse reduces the
riddle of human sexuality to the binary frame<br>it also discusses that the bi-polar organization of sexuality does not suppress, but reproduces sexual dissidence. A male-female pair is envisaged by the prevailing discourse<br>Butler&rsquo<br>s ideas of
performativity and drag performance will be employed to indicate that gender and sexuality are not inborn, but culturally and historically determined, and to explore how deviant sexualities undermine the double columns of the masculine and the feminine, the homosexual and the heterosexual. An investigation into the homosexual/heterosexual split will demonstrate how power shifts between the points of the binary frame rather than being monopolized by the dominant discourse. The regulating discourse polarizes homosexuality and heterosexuality<br>it deploys the binary frame to overvalue the heterosexual and to disparage the homosexual<br>the established order seeks to fortify its authority through the binary
thought. Yet, the binary logic is internally unstable<br>binary oppositions constantly threaten to collapse and fuse into one another<br>therefore, due to the inherent indeterminacy of the binary logic, homosexuality is not annihilated, but
rejuvenated by heterosexuality<br>thus, power flows among the dominant and counter discourses. Queer theory, drawing on post-structuralism, subverts the binary frame,
and glorifies the proliferation of sexual identities and practices beyond the dualistic understanding.
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Ayache, Solange. "‘In-Yer-Head’ Theatre : Staging the Mind in Contemporary British Drama. Towards a Quantum Psychopoetics of the Stage." Thesis, Paris 4, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA040010.
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Cette étude s’intéresse à l’espace mental comme nouveau terrain d’exploration du drame britannique contemporain, et examine les manifestations d’un mouvement qui « met en pièces » les régions inexplorées des pensées inconscientes et les contrées impénétrables du traumatisme. Puisant dans les découvertes de la psychanalyse et des sciences cognitives, inspiré par le changement de paradigme de la mécanique quantique et ses interrogations sur le rôle et la nature de la conscience, ce théâtre non plus tant « in-yer-face » que « in-yer-head » s’éloigne de la sensibilité des années 1990. Les pièces de Crimp, Kane, Churchill, Cooper, Frayn, Stephens, Payne, Haddon, Ravenhill, Neilson et d’autres déconstruisent et reconstruisent le personnage comme la somme virtuelle de tous ses possibles. Le mode d’existence spéculatif, diffracté et pluriel du sujet renouvelle les définitions du réalisme psychologique et du réalisme théâtral. Ce travail étudie les modalités de cette « psychopoétique quantique » autour de concepts clés comme la probabilité ou l’incertitude, et montre comment des métaphores issues de la théorie quantique comme la dualité onde-particule ou les mondes multiples servent à illustrer l’indétermination de la psyché en évoquant les mécanismes de défense et autres symptômes qui constituent la réalité subjective d’esprits affectés par le traumatisme, la psychose, le stress ou la maladie neurologique. Nous montrons qu’en explorant la nature de la conscience, du soi et de la réalité ainsi que la condition des femmes, ces pièces posent des questions philosophiques sur le libre arbitre et la possibilité de choix dans un monde devenu plus incertain et imprévisible que jamais<br>This study asserts that the human mind has become the new frontier in contemporary British drama, and interrogates and assesses manifestations of this movement which stages uncharted regions of thought and the dark territories of traumatic mindscapes. Drawing on theories from psychoanalysis and cognitive science, and inspired by the paradigm shifts of quantum mechanics and its interrogations on the role and nature of consciousness, this new theatre moves from “in-yer-face” to “in-yer-head” and away from the sensibility of the “nasty nineties.” Plays by Crimp, Kane, Churchill, Cooper, Frayn, Stephens, Payne, Haddon and others deconstruct and reconstruct the character as thevirtual sum of all her possibilities. In these mental spaces, the subject’s speculative, diffracted and plural mode of existence redefines psychological realism and stage realism. Examining the modalities of a quantum “psychopoetics” around key concepts such as probability and uncertainty, I show how metaphors borrowed from quantum theory based on the double slit-experiment, the wave-particle duality, the wavefunction collapse, the observer effect, quantum decoherence, quantum entanglement, and the many-worlds interpretation are used to emphasise the intrinsic indeterminacy of our minds. They evoke a number of psychological defense mechanisms and other symptoms that constitute the subjective reality of disturbed minds affected by trauma, psychosis, stress or neurological disease. By exploring the nature of mind, the self, and reality, and the condition of women, these plays address philosophical questions about free will and choice in a world that has become more uncertain and unpredictable than ever
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Rosler, Julia. "Acting the part : gender and performance in contemporary plays by women." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2399.
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Acknowledging performance as a process through which gender identities are constituted, the thesis explores attempts in women's theatre to subject these very constructs to creative deconstruction. It offers a study of plays by Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels and Timberlake Wertenbaker. Setting their work in the context of prevailing discourses of representation, the analysis delineates the ways in which plays by women interrogate the Western tradition of meaning and perception. The thesis proposes theatrical performance as a strategic engagement with the very means by which women's position is constituted. Therefore, it argues that in women's dramatic work, the possibility of resistance, of agency and choice occurs in the playful adaptation of dominant discourse, allowing for new figurations of subjectivity. Exploring the difficulties and limitations involved in this strategy, the study evaluates how plays by women release a potential for transgression which dislocates the structures of representation.
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Machon, Josephine. "(Syn)aesthetics and disturbance : tracing a transgressive style." Thesis, Brunel University, 2003. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/1231.
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An examination and exploration of ‘the (syn)aesthetic style’, a particular sensate mode of performance and appreciation that has become prominent in recent years in contemporary arts practice. The (syn)aesthetic performance style fuses disciplines and techniques to create interdisciplinary and intersensual work with emphasis upon; the (syn)aesthetic hybrid; the prioritisation of the body in performance and the visceral-verbal ‘play-text’. ‘(Syn)aesthetics’ is adopted as an original discourse for the analysis of such work, appropriating certain quintessential features of the physiological condition of synaesthesia to clarify the impulse in performance and appreciation which affects a ‘disturbance’ within audience interpretation. Original terms employed attempt to elucidate the complex appreciation strategies integral to this performance experience. These include the double-edged semantic/somatic or making-sense/sense-making process of appreciation, which embraces the individual, immediate and innate, and the ‘corporeal memory’ of the perceiving body. Liveness and the live(d) moment are considered, alongside notions of ritual and transcendence and the primordial and technological. The argument surveys the inheritance that saw to this contemporary style emerging, in Britain in particular, considering female performance practice, intercultural and interdisciplinary ensemble performance and the ‘New Writing’ aesthetic. Critical and performance theorists referred to include Friedrich Nietzsche, the Russian Formalists, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Antonin Artaud, Valère Novarina, Howard Barker and Susan Broadhurst. Contemporary practitioners highlighted as case studies exemplary of (syn)aesthetic practice are Sara Giddens, Marisa Carnesky, Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane. Furthermore, documentation of a series of original performance workshops explores the (syn)aesthetic impulse in performance and analysis from the perspectives of writer, performer and audience. (Syn)aesthetics as an interpretative device endeavours to enhance understanding of the intangible areas of performance which are increasingly difficult to articulate, thereby presenting a mode of analysis that extends performance theory for students and practitioners within the arts.
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Campos, Liliane. "Le discours scientifique dans le théâtre britannique contemporain (1988-2008)." Thesis, Paris 4, 2009. http://www.theses.fr/2009PA040163.
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Depuis vingt ans, le discours des sciences exactes apparaît régulièrement sur la scène britannique : la mécanique quantique, les mathématiques du chaos, la thermodynamique et les sciences naturelles sont aujourd’hui des matériaux dramaturgiques courants. Cette étude définit l’esthétique particulière et le nouveau rapport entre théâtre et savoir produits par ce phénomène, à partir d’un corpus reflétant la diversité de la création contemporaine, des dramaturges Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Timberlake Wertenbaker ou Caryl Churchill aux compagnies de théâtre Complicite et On Theatre. Le discours scientifique joue dans ce théâtre un rôle simultanément épistémologique et poétique, car ses formes y sont détournées et activées dans de nouveaux contextes. Il fournit des métaphores et des structures narratives à des dramaturgies incertaines, caractérisées par une esthétique postmoderne de la vérité multiple et de l’ouverture du sens. Ces transferts discursifs sont ici abordés selon les trois grandes modalités du rapport à la science ainsi construit : l’imitation d’un modèle rationnel, la critique d’un lieu de pouvoir, et l’importation des schèmes poétiques de l’imaginaire scientifique<br>Over the past twenty years, the discourse of hard science has appeared increasingly frequently on the British stage: quantum mechanics, chaos mathematics, thermodynamics and the natural sciences have provided dramatic material for contemporary artists. This thesis defines the resulting aesthetic, and the new relationship between theatre and knowledge that can be found in the work of dramatists such as Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Timberlake Wertenbaker or Caryl Churchill, and theatre companies such as Complicite and On Theatre. The function of this scientific discourse is both epistemological and poetic: its forms are activated in new contexts, and bring metaphors and narrative structures to a postmodern drama characterised by uncertainty and multiple truths. These discursive transfers are analysed according to the relationship they create with science, which can involve imitating it as a rational model, criticizing it an instrument of power, or importing the shapes and patterns of scientific imagination
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Daniels, Kelly. "Creating the ensemble, a student collaboration on Caryl Churchill's cloud nine." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0010/MQ31315.pdf.
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Quinn, Joshua. "In Perceiving Monsters: A Costume Design For Caryl Churchill's The Skriker." VCU Scholars Compass, 2013. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3050.
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The purpose of this thesis is to document my process for a costume design of The Skriker by Caryl Churchill. Included is the design account confronted in telling the story, analyzing the script, developing concepts and looks, and final rendering of the characters. The paper finishes with a reflection on how the design served the script and my conclusions on its success.
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Tang, Yufei. "Lighting design for Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II". Set and Projection Design for Caryl Churchill's "Love and Information"." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61250.
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Edward II by Christopher Marlowe, originally written in 1593, was presented at the 250 Seat The Chan Centre for Performing Arts, Telus Studio Theatre at the University of British Columbia in Fall 2016. It ran from September 29th to October 15th and was directed by Guest Artist Mary Vingoe. With set Design by Robert Gardiner, costume design by Kiara Lawson and sound design by Edward Dawson. Edward II was the first production of the UBC Theatre and Film Department’s 2016/2017 season. This thesis report documents my lighting design and design process for this production.
Love and Information by Caryl Churchill, originally written in 2012, was presented at the 400 seat Frederic Wood Theatre at the University of British Columbia in Spring 2017. It ran from Jan 19th to February 4th and was directed by MFA candidate Lauren Taylor. Lighting and Projection Design was by Stefan Zubovic, costume design was by Alaia Hamer, and sound design was by Edward Dawson. This thesis report documents my set and partial projection design and design process for the production.<br>Arts, Faculty of<br>Graduate
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Tosadori, Luca <1991>. "The Drama of Daughterhood in Great Britain and Scandinavia: Caryl Churchill’s and Margareta Garpe’s Plays of the 1970s and 1980s." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2021. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/9974/1/Tosadori_Luca_tesi.pdf.
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This thesis explores the representation of daughterhood through a psychoanalytical and feminist critical approach in a selection of women playwrights from Great Britain and Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s. Motherhood and sisterhood have been pivotal topics of second-wave feminism; the purpose of this study is to change perspective and look at the daughter as both observer and active participant in the feminist battles. Starting from a presentation on the theoretical and methodological framework which centres on motherhood and daughterhood in psychoanalytical and feminist discourse, a historical overview of the different literary contexts will be provided. More specifically, the emergence of Thatcherism in Great Britain and its implications in feminist politics will be analysed in contrast to the consolidation of the social state in Scandinavia. The analysis will focus on two case studies, Caryl Churchill for Great Britain and Margareta Garpe for Sweden. Caryl Churchill is considered one of the most inventive and visionary living playwrights in the UK, with works that have already entered the literary canon. Her investigation on motherhood and daughterhood related themes will be tackled in three of her most celebrated plays: ownership and motherhood in Owners, the performance of motherhood in Cloud Nine, and the mother/daughter battle in Top Girls. Margareta Garpe is one of the most important voices of contemporary Swedish theatre; she famously collaborated with fellow playwright Suzanne Osten in realising political plays that aimed at igniting the public debate on feminist topics. This study will take into consideration the most influential of these collaborative works, Jösses Flickor! Befrielesen Är Nära, which will be followed by two more intimate plays: Barnet and Till Julia. The final part of the thesis will provide a contrastive analysis of the case studies, to look at the different themes in a broader perspective.
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YU, Hsiao Min. "English drama For critical pedagogy : adapting Caryl Churchill’S dramas as a methodological tool for community-engaged theatre workshopping in post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2016. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/eng_etd/12.
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Tertiary-level drama is often condescendingly perceived in Hong Kong as either vocational or leisure-related, and tends to be marginalized in many – though not all – curricula as an activity for extra-curricular inter-university competition. This research aims at re-imagining Drama and Community Theatre as a critical pedagogy in promoting community culture. The aim of the research project is to strengthen the social functions of drama as community experience and as a tool for empowerment in the ‘glocal’ sociopolitical context of today. The study examines the methodology of a semi-scripted, community-engaged, theatre workshopping initiative with scenes adapted from Caryl Churchill’s plays, offering a powerful pedagogic praxis with the goal of raising social and cultural consciousness in the post-Umbrella Movement era of Hong Kong.
The first part of the study focuses on the experimental forms of community-oriented plays and theatre workshopping practices in historical contexts, investigating how Churchill’s plays respond to theatre as social criticism in contemporary society. It proposes four community-engaged theatre workshopping models with scene extracts adopted and adapted from Top Girls, Cloud Nine, Serious Money and A Number by Caryl Churchill. These models are designed to engage with the learning needs and interests of tertiary students particularly in the current global sociopolitical context.
The initiative is supported by an empirical action research element, which envisages one of the models as a form of critical pedagogy, connecting the typical tertiary Drama Studies curriculum with outreach community experience. The second part of the research project presents a local case study in which scene extracts from Top Girls were adapted and introduced to Hong Kong secondary students as a methodological tool for community-engaged theatre workshopping. This small-scale experimental model of a community drama outreach programme was facilitated by a focus group of students from an undergraduate Drama course.
The research results reflect on how students’ existing social awareness of community cultural development and identity can be linked to the glocal construct in the way they perceive and interact with the contemporary community-oriented plays that Churchill has produced. Based on the narratives from the focus group and my participant-observation of the response from the participating community, my qualitative study makes a number of conclusions about the effect of such pedagogic methodology on students’ empowerment in learning autonomy. The model is intended to encourage tertiary students to create their own forms of theatre workshopping to share their internalized subject knowledge and personal insights with other communities outside the institutional setting. And the research expresses the significance of theatre for community as rehearsals of the anticipated tensions between citizens and institutions in the global sociopolitical context.
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Gardner, Janet Elizabeth. "Caryl Churchill: The Thatcher years." 1995. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9541108.
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During the eleven years of Margaret Thatcher's administrations in Britain, playwright Caryl Churchill had perhaps the most productive period in her career to date and achieved an unprecedented degree of success. This phenomenon is unusual since Churchill is a self-described socialist-feminist and these were times of increasing conservatism in the theatre, as in society as a whole. This dissertation seeks to explain this apparent contradiction. It begins with a survey of changes in British society during the Thatcher years, including the effects which Thatcher's policies and attitudes had on women, feminists, the left, and artists (especially theatre workers). Next, it examines Churchill's collaborative writing strategies against the context formed by an ideology of radical individualism. Three specific plays from the Thatcher Years are then considered in terms of the society's influences on them and their potential impact on contemporary culture. Top Girls (1982) is discussed as an attempt to reclaim the term "feminism" from a new breed of conservative business women and return it to the materialist-feminists who were once the core of the British women's movement. Fen (1983) is examined in terms of regional policy, class and gender issues, and the reconfiguration of "family" in Britain in the 1980s. Serious Money (1987) was Churchill's greatest commercial success, and the reasons for its popularity form the basis for the discussion of this play. In each case, considerable attention is given to issues of critical and public reception.
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"Caryl Churchill and Gender Roles: Owners, Cloud Nýne, Top Girls." Master's thesis, METU, 2005. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12606786/index.pdf.
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Considine, Kerri Ann. "An Implacable Force: Caryl Churchill and the “Theater of Cruelty”." 2011. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/866.
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Churchill’s plays incorporate intensity, complexity, and imagination to create a theatrical landscape that is rich in danger and possibility. Examining her plays through the theoretical lens of Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty” allows an open investigation into the way that violence, transgression, and theatricality function in her work to create powerful and thought-provoking pieces of theatre. By creating her own contemporary “theater of cruelty,” Churchill creates plays that actively and violently transgress physical, social, and political boundaries.
This paper examines three of Churchill’s plays spanning over thirty years of her career to investigate the different ways Churchill has used concepts of Artaudian cruelty to layer and complicate the theatrical experience, and each offers a different vision of a modern “theater of cruelty.” A Mouthful of Birds provides a starting point for exploring Artaudian concepts in connection to her work and uses physical, embodied cruelty as a catalyst through which the characters must come to terms with their subjectivity in a system which has allocated their rightful “place” in society. Hotel incorporates the same magnitude of cruelty into everyday rituals and mundane actions, and an Artaudian reading reveals the way in which an ‘invisible’ cruelty acts on both the characters and the audience as a form of erasure through which the “vanished” characters “signal through the flames” in an attempt to re-assert their subjectivity. In Seven Jewish Children, Churchill inverts the cruelty and re-enacts onstage the Artaudian ‘double’ of the terror occurring during the Gaza conflict in order to force the characters and audience into a direct relationship with the cruelty. Using Artaud as a framework through which to investigate Churchill’s work foregrounds the way in which the interplay of cruelty rips apart the commonly accepted cultural norms on which our understanding of the world is based and opens complex and multi-faceted possibilities of interpretation and understanding that are absolutely necessary for investigating the intensity of the theatrical experience in her plays.
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Kovačeva, Elizabet. "Abjekce ve vybraných hrách Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill a Tima Crouche." Master's thesis, 2017. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-369982.
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Thesis Abstract The present thesis offers to read six plays by three contemporary British playwrights - Sarah Kane's Crave (1997) and 4.48 Psychosis (1999), Caryl Churchill's The Skriker (1994) and Far Away (2000), and Tim Crouch's ENGLAND (2007) and The Author (2009) through the lens of Julia Kristeva's essay on abjection, Powers of Horror (1982). Kristeva theorizes abjection as that which retains some resemblance to the subject or object, but is neither - or no longer belongs to the subject. Being confronted with the abject is unpleasant because it is threatening for the subject. It contains all that is habitually removed from life and does not belong in the symbolic order - corpses and excrements. Likewise, the maternal body needs to become abject for the infant to realize its own borders and bodily integrity. Kristeva proposes that the abject finds its way back into the symbolic order through literature, and reads a number of writers as being concerned with the abject. In the theatre, as well as in the visual arts, abjection has been a useful theoretical starting point, despite the fact that it is seen by a number of critics as something which cannot truly be grasped, and as resisting description and verbal imposition. Each playwright and each play includes a different aspect of the abject. Central to...
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Hui-chun, Liu, and 劉慧君. "The Dying Patriarchy: A Feminist Reading of Caryl Churchill''s Cloud Nine." Thesis, 1999. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35362589400516234288.
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碩士<br>國立中興大學<br>外國語文學系<br>87<br>ABSTRACT
This thesis is an attempt to interpret Caryl Churchill''s Cloud Nine in terms of re-cent feminist ideas. In traditional point of view, man is always the subject while woman is the object. Freud thinks that id and ego are the very constituents of our nature and it is necessary for woman to sacrifice herself to nourish her children. Kristeva accepts Freud''s theory and develops her own conception of the semiotic and the symbolic. In general, Freud’s id and ego are similar to Kristeva''s semiotic and symbolic. Furthermore, the result of man’s oppression on woman also brings out man''s monologue: man speaks to himself. Man remains in what Lacan calls "the mirror stage," only able to see his own reflection wherever he looks. However, the repressed never disappears. The repressed and what Kristeva terms "the abject," dark and obscure, eventually come back. Irigaray goes further to appropriate and, at the same time, deconstruct Lacan’s and Freud’s theories. She makes great efforts to awaken woman’s consciousness. First of all, Irigaray probes into the ambivalent relationship between mother and daughter to enhance woman''s subjectivity. Next, with the help of Brecht’s alienation-effect, woman may possess certain phallus and even become the phallus. Thirdly, woman may well appropriate man’s language to reconstruct her own; furthermore, woman’s body is her very language. Likewise, lesbianism and post-colonialism are also declarations to reassess the traditional patri-archy.
This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction. Chapter Two is a survey on some feminist concepts respectively discussed by Kristeva and Irigaray. Chapter Three focuses on the topics of role-playing, transvestitism in per-formance, and discussion on the two central characters of Cloud Nine, Betty and Clive. Ideas related to lesbianism and postcolonialism are discussed in Chapter Four: through analysis of several couples in the play, it is easy to see the dying patriarchy. Finally, Chapter Five, the conclusion, is a structural analysis of the two parts of the play.
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Rowe, Danelle. "Power and oppression: a study of materialism and gender in selected drama of Caryl Churchill." Diss., 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1286.
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Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'.
Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism.
The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework.
Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms.<br>English Studies<br>M. A. (English)
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King, Jay M. Sandahl Carrie. "Rifts in time and space playing with time in Barker, Stoppard, and Churchill /." Diss., 2004. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04092004-164526.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004.<br>Advisor: Dr. Carrie Sandahl, Florida State University, School of Theatre. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed May 20, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.
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焦季蘊. "Strategic Intersections of Gender and Race in Caryl Churchill''s Cloud Nine and David Henry Hwang''s M. Butterfly." Thesis, 2002. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29952062492727851375.
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碩士<br>國立清華大學<br>外國語文學系<br>90<br>This thesis will investigate two works, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine (1978) and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly (1988), which, though widely separated in time and space, share Lacan’s idea of identity formation, Judith Butler’s gender performativity and Bhabha’s idea of colonial mimicry through transvestite theater.
Both of the playwrights use cross-dressing, cross-casting and doubling to explore the idea of gender performance and gender fluidity. In addition, they attempt to subvert and deconstruct the traditional conventions of gender and race system. However, transvestitism is treated differently in these two works. In Cloud Nine, the playwright explained in the arrangements of the casting: four of the characters (Betty, Joshua, and Edward in Act I and Cathy in Act II) would be played by the opposite sex (or trans-race) before the beginning of the play. Gender fluidity and multiplicity are also reflected in the characters of the drama text. In general, the character’s social gender is destined by the playwrights. So the other issue is cross-dressing plays also break the characters gender fixity in the text. But in M. Butterfly, one of the characters (Song Liling) has to play the opposite sex because of stealing the important political secrets (espionage). Thus, this character’s real social gender is male, but he should play the other social gender of female in the plot. By analyzing different cross-dressing plays, the traditional binary and stereotypical model of gender and race will be broken. This argument will go along with Lacan’s idea of subject formation and Butler’s idea of gender.
In my study, I will focus on the following questions: how do the playwrights use cross-dressing to point out the concepts of gender performance and gender construction? How does cross-dressing influence characters’ sexual identity? How do the strategies of cross-dressing, cross-casting and doubling shatter the social norms? And the last, if both plays challenge the conventions of gender/race norms through meta-theatrical devices, I will discuss furthermore whether these two works are subversive or not.
The first chapter is an introduction of theatrical strategies in both plays which the playwrights use. Besides their social statuses, both of them use similar strategies in the dramatic structure, settings, the time of the play and the performing styles to challenge the theatre conventions.
In my second chapter, I will trace certain gender problems discussed by Freud, Lacan, and Butler. I will begin the chapter with an overview of Freud’s process of subject formation. Then, I will draw on Lacanian psychoanalysis. Based on Lacanian psychoanalysis, we can understand how Clive and Gallimard construct their subject identities in relation to ‘other’--- passive feminine roles. Moreover, I will introduce Judith Butler’s concept of gender. Beyond Freud, Lacan and Butler, the last part of chapter two includes Bhabha’s ideas of “stereotype,” “ambivalence” and “mimicry” derived from colonial contexts to help us explain the race issue in two plays.
In chapter three, through the analyses of Clive, Betty, Edward and Joshua in Cloud Nine, I will discuss how Churchill exposes the sovereignty of patriarchy, heterosexuality and colonialism. Besides, I would like to talk about the functions of theatrical strategies. How does Churchill use the strategies of cross-dressing, cross-casting and doubling to threaten the authority of the patriarchy, heterosexuality and colonialism in this play? How does Churchill manipulate cross-dressing to manifest gender performance and gender construction?
In chapter four, through the transvestite character’s (Song’s) cross-dressing in M. Butterfly, I want to discuss what Gallimard’s real sexuality is as well as how Gallimard’s western imperial ideology causes his downfall. On the other hand, Song’s transformation of gender identity is another important issue to be discussed.
The conclusion chapter summarizes the discussion in other four chapters. I will also state the different functions of the cross-dressing in both plays. Furthermore, we can examine whether these two plays are subversive or not.
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Mainardi, Eleonora. "Forma identitatis : identità nazionali e individuali a confronto : Portogallo e Inghilterra nel teatro di Hélia Correia e Caryl Churchill." Doctoral thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10316/12558.
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Tese de doutoramento em Letras (Línguas e Literaturas Modernas- Literatura Portuguesa) apresentada à Fac. de Letras da Univ. de Coimbra<br>No âmbito do "Corso di Dottorato di Ricerca in Studi Interculturali Europei (Ciclo XX), da Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere, Università degli Studi di Urbino "Carlo Bo"
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Vaziri, Nasab Kermany Fereshteh [Verfasser]. "Towards delogocentrism : a study of the dramatic works of Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill / vorgelegt von Fereshteh Varziri Nasab Kermany." 2008. http://d-nb.info/997075546/34.
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Guillén, Nieto Victoria. "El diálogo dramático y la representación escénica: aproximación pragmática al estudio de los procesos de interacción verbal y no-verbal, con especial referencia a Top Girls de Caryl Churchill." Doctoral thesis, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10045/3583.
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Savilonis, Margaret Frances Wolf Stacy Ellen. ""--give us the history we haven't had, make us the women we can't be" motherhood & history in plays by Caryl Churchill and Pam Gems, 1976-1984 /." 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3143464.
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Chou, Yen-Chun, and 周妍君. "The Language Constructed Gender Identifications and Post-colonial Narratives in David Henry Hwang''s M. Butterfly and Caryl Churchill''s Cloud Nine." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/57104346877607548663.
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碩士<br>臺灣大學<br>戲劇學研究所<br>98<br>In this thesis, I compare David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly with Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine. They are very famous post-colonial plays and both deal with the repressions on sexes and races. Furthermore, they use the dramatic techniques of mimicry, masquerade and transvestite to emphasize these issues. In the first chapter, I provide an overview of the whole thesis. In the second chapter, I introduce Bakhtin’s social linguistics, Judith Butler’s “gender as performance” and Edward Said’s Orientalism to retrospect the theories of sexes, gender, language and post-colonialism. In the third chapter, I focus on the language of M. Butterfly. It plays with the colonial stereotyped language to defy it. However, when using the colonial language, it employs the colonial ideology at the same time, which makes it fail to resist the imperialism. In the fourth chapter, I lay emphasis on the language of Cloud Nine. It presents a discontinuity between two acts. However, this rupture creates a world of multiple ideologies, so as to function as Bakhtin’s heteroglossia. In the fifth chapter, I compare M. Butterfly and Cloud Nine to argue that M. Butterfly uses the “monologic” language and Cloud Nine uses the “hybridized” language, which presents different views of world and plural ideologies equal to the author’s viewpoint.
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Savilonis, Margaret Frances. ""--give us the history we haven't had, make us the women we can't be": motherhood & history in plays by Caryl Churchill and Pam Gems, 1976-1984." Thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/1257.
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Lai, Hui-hsun, and 賴慧勳. "Caryl Churchill's softcops:a Chinese translation with introduction." Thesis, 1995. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44837546434603472087.
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Attea, Laura M. "Production promptbook for Caryl Churchill's Top Girls." 1986. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/13503794.html.
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Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1986.<br>Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-64).
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Lai, Tzu-jung, and 賴姿蓉. "Carnivalesque (Sub)version in Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine." Thesis, 2001. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/97171224334947512135.
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碩士<br>國立高雄師範大學<br>英語學系<br>89<br>Caryl Churchill, the first female resident dramatist at the Royal Court, is among the best known and most widely performed and published of British leading women playwrights today. Churchill is in favor of theatrical inventiveness and subversive comedy and is very much concerned about social and political issues. Her manner of approaching these issues tends to be playful, startling, and subversively comic. Churchill’s work is notable for its open-endedness and its analysis of patriarchy at the levels of both content and form. Her plays challenge the conventions of theatre as sharply as they question social norms in a phallogocentric society.
Cloud Nine is a satirical comedy encompassing provocative viewpoints of race, class, gender, and sexuality. This play consists of two acts. Everything prohibited, tabooed or covered up in Act One is celebrated in Act Two. Everything authoritative, rigid or serious in Act One is mocked and reversed in Act Two. The world represented in Act Two is a topsy-turvy reflection of Act One. The subversive and revolutionary spirit accords with the carnival spirit of reversal, inversion, subversion, and the upside-down. The carnival spirit displayed in the textual content is further highlighted in theatrical performance. Thus, in order to bring into the limelight the subversive spirit of Cloud Nine, this study dissects both textual and stagecraft features principally from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalization.
This thesis is divided into five chapters. The opening chapter serves to introduce the motive for this study and to review previous critiques of Cloud Nine. Chapter Two concentrates on the textual analysis of Act One, in which gender/sexual and racial stereotypes are used as a strategy by which to categorize and regulate each character so as to maintain the male, patriarchal, heterosexual, and imperialistic order or truth. The authoritarian world no longer exists by the second act. Chapter Three focuses on the textual analysis of Act Two, in which all hierarchical norms and patriarchal stereotypes are subverted. Hence, the exploration of carnival spirits and characteristics is the kernel of this chapter. Chapter Four aims to probe the subversiveness of the stagecraft or theatrical performances. Chapter Five is the concluding chapter that sums up the main points of this study and concludes that Cloud Nine is a carnivalized theatrical work that embodies the carnival sense of the world and is permeated with the carnival spirit.