ENGLISH THEATRE DEFINITIONS T6:

THEATRE OF THE 70s AND 80s

INTRODUCTION TO THE UNIT AND OBJECTIVES:

The objective of this unit is to introduce students to the theatrical innovations carried out by British
female playwrights in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s.
We will deal with the relationship between theatre and politics and the rise of feminism through the
work of Caryl Churchill (1938-), the first female playwright in residence at the Royal Court Theatre,
and Winsome Pinnock (1961-) the first female black playwright produced at the National Theatre. The
other major playwright to be studied in this unit is Tom Stoppard (1937-)
Key issues in this unit are: feminism, politics, social mobility, motherhood, post-colonialism and
ethnicity, (postmodern) theatrical experimentation and playfulness.

INFLUENTIAL BRITISH PLAYWRIGHTS OF THESE DECADES:

➔ Although we are mainly focusing on the work of female playwrights in this unit, we should
mention the work of other very influential playwrights whose work was very relevant in the 70s and 80s,
such as David Hare, Howard Brenton, Peter Shaffer and Alan Ayckburn.
➔ However, we could single out TOM STOPPARD as perhaps the most original and most critically
acclaimed playwright having emerged in these decades.
➔ His theatrical work is at once intellectually sophisticated and lavishly playful.
➔ Stoppard delights in the juxtaposition of different theatrical planes of reality and as he believes
that theatre is “first and foremost a recreation” (qtd. Hunter 3) his plays remain witty entertainments
inviting us to smile

CONTEXTS Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls (1982):

★ Women’s Liberation Movement:
The plays that we are reading in this unit may be read in relation with the second wave of feminism.
Many of the ideas that drove this movement originated in the United States, but were quickly picked up
and developed in Britain and other parts of the world.

“Whilst first-wave feminism feminism had focused its attention on big ‘P’ Political and legal issues
[women’s and universal suffrage], the second wave saw equal importance of small ‘p’ or personal
politics, and campaigned around a wide range of issues including women’s access to contraception and
abortion, resistance to domestic and sexual violence, and the examination of women’s roles within the
family and the work place.” (Bush 1)
➔ Feminist campaigns resulted in changes to the law in the United Kingdom, such as:
◆ The Abortion Act (1967)
◆ The Equal Pay Act (1970)
◆ The Sex Discrimination Act (1975)
◆ The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act (1976)

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★ MARGARET THATCHER AND BRITISH POLITICS
➔ Top Girls is haunted throughout by the figure of Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first female prime
minister, who was in office from 1979 to 1990. In fact, director Max Stafford-Clark cites Thatcher’s
election as the major stimulus that prompted Churchill to develop her play over other ideas she was
mulling over at the time (Bush 3).
★ THATCHERISM
➔ Thatcher introduced several economic and social policies associated with the theory of
monetarism, which posits that financial markets operate best when left to their own devices, rather
than under state regulation.
➔ The control of money supply with high interest rates to control the rates of inflation without
resorting to union-negotiated pay policies led to mass unemployment, but despite that she managed to
win a second general election.
➔ Thatcher’s policies partially succeeded in boosting the British economy, particularly in the
capital, but this was achieved at the cost of inequality, a widening gap between the richest and the
poorest members of society, particularly in the northern and rural areas of the UK.
★ THE “IRON LADY” AS A DIVISIVE FIGURE
➔ The policies carried out by the conservative PM Margaret Thatcher, together with her public
image, turned her into a very divisive figure.
◆ Think, for instance, of Elton John’s 2005 song “Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher”, which was
included in Billy Elliott The Musical, based on the eponymous 2000 film directed by Stephen Daldry.
◆ The bitter year-long stand-off between Margaret Thatcher, Arthur Scargill and the National Union
of Mineworkers resulting in the 1984-85 miners' strike affecting the British coal industry is the
background for the 2000 film Billy Elliott and has come to be seen as one of the defining events of the
Thatcher era.
➔ In Act 3 of Top Girls, Thatcher also becomes a divisive figure in the pivotal argument between
characters Joyce and Marlene.
★ Churchill and the Theatre scene of the 1970s theatrical collectives
➔ While in the 1960s Caryl Churchill wrote mainly radio drama, in the 1970s she became much
more engaged with theatrical collectives, that is, theatrical companies that sought to challenge
established directorial and management structures by operating in less hierarchical ways and that
promoted ensemble practice and shared decision making. One of them was the Monstrous Regiment,
established in 1975 in Cardiff. Churchill collaborated with them in 1976 with her play Vinegar Tom.
★ MONSTROUS REGIMENT
“Named in ironic reference to John Knox’s sixteenth century pamphlet, ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet
against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’ , the company was created by a group of professional
women actors who had first got together just nine months earlier, in August 1975. Angered by the
marginal status and stereotypical depiction of women in both mainstream and alternative theatre, they
decided to create a professional company that would place women’s lives and experiences centre
stage, produce and perform work that met high theatrical standards, and provide serious opportunities
for women as performers, writers, directors, designers and technicians.”
★ JOIN STOCK THEATRE GROUP
➔ Join Stock was another influential theatrical collective formed from a primarily socialist
perspective. This British experimental theatre group was founded in 1974 by Max Stafford-Clark,
David Hare, and David Aukin to develop new writing for the theatre.

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➔ Workshops set up by William Gaskill and Max Stafford-Clark resulted in a unique working
method which placed actors and director in collaboration with the playwright. They worked with Caryl
Churchill to create Light Shining in Buckinghamshire in 1976 and Cloud Nine in 1979, establishing a
long-standing and fruitful working relationship between Churchill and Stafford-Clark, who directed both
productions.
★ Churchill, Stafford-Clark and The Royal Court Theatre
➔ Max Stafford Clark was the longest serving Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre
(1979-1993). He developed many influential new writers including Sarah Daniels, Andrea Dunbar
and Jim Cartwright. He worked with Caryl Churchill again, directing her seminal play Top Girls and
major revivals later on. Timberlake Wertenbaker’s masterpiece Our Country’s Good was also
commissioned by Stafford-Clark at the Court.
➔ Between 1974 and 1975 Churchill was employed at the Royal Court as the first female Writer in
residence. They have continued to produce much of Churchill’s work to the present day

TOP GIRLS

★ TOP GIRLS FIRST ACT

➔ Top Girl’s dinner party scene (2002 production at Aldwych Theatre) From left to right: Lady Nijo,
Pope Joan, Marlene, Patient Griselda and Isabella Bird.

★ Dulle Griet, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563), oil on panel, Museum Mayer van den
Bergh.

★ Feminist Art: Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974- 1979)

★ Top Girls’ dramatic techniques and formal innovations and their relation to
feminism
➔ Churchill’s Top Girls is, formally, a complex play.
➔ Its structural innovations can be seen as a way of mirroring its “social, multivalenced
approach to representing women’s experience” (Reinelt 174)

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➔ According to Janelle Reinelt, using an epic dramaturgy that many have linked to Brecht,
“Churchill placed her characters as social subjects at the intersection of economic, religious and
political forces which disciplined their sexuality and prescribed their gender.” (174)
★ Top Girls’ dramatic techniques and formal innovations
Amongst the innovative techniques used by Churchill are:
➔ An all female cast.
➔ Multi-roling üThe overlapping of dramatic dialogue.
➔ An Individual and distinct voice for each dramatic character.
➔ A non-linear, non-chronological structure.
➔ The exploration of women’s experiences through collage and juxtaposition, rather than
character development or character progression.
Given the range of female characters depicted (in particular in the middle act of the play where
women of varying ages social backgrounds and outlooks are seen), and how they are dramatically
constructed we can understand the way in which Churchill charts the difficulty of women bonding with
each other in a competitive economic climate

OPTIONAL PLAYS: Leave Taking (1987), Winsome Pinnock Arcadia (1993), Tom
Stoppard

★ WINSOME PINNOCK
Winsome Pinnock was born in London. Her award-winning plays include The Wind of Change
(Half Moon Theatre, 1987), Leave Taking (Liverpool Playhouse Studio and National Theatre,
1988), Picture Palace (Women's Theatre Group, 1988), A Hero's Welcome (Women's Playhouse
Trust at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1989), A Rock in Water (Royal Court Young People's
Theatre at the Theatre Upstairs, 1989), Talking in Tongues (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1991),
Mules (Clean Break Theatre Company, 1996) and One Under (Tricycle Theatre, 2005). She has
also written for radio and television. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at London
Metropolitan University. (Source: Drama Online).

★ TOM STOPPARD’S MAJOR PLAYS

1967: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead1972: Jumpers

1974: Travesties
1982: The Real Thing
1993: Arcadia
1997: The Invention of Love 2007: The Coast of Utopia

★ THE SYNOPSIS OF ARCADIA 1993

“Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia dances back and forth across the centuries, discussing time, truth,
love, literature, heat, science, the differences between Classical and Romantic
temperaments – and the disruptive influence of sex on all other things we know about life.
Arcadia takes place in a single room on the Coverly estate in two separate times: the
Regency period and the present. 1809 finds a household in transition, where an Arcadian
English garden landscape is being uprooted to make way for picturesque Gothic gardens,

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complete with hermitage. Meanwhile, brilliant thirteen-year-old Lady Thomasina proposes a
startling scientific theory that is only starting to be figured out more than 200 years later. In
the present day, we find two competing scholars researching the world of the estate in the
Regency Era. Hannah is intrigued by the identity of the hermit who inhabited the hermitage
prescribed by the garden renovation, and Bernard has ideas about a bloody duel of passion
that took place on the grounds, involving Lord Byron. What results is a play The New York
Times called, “the perfect blend of brains and emotion, wit and heartache” in which
everyone tries to puzzle over the meaning of the universe, and each, in his own way, is
blindsided by the attraction that Newton left out of his equations.” (“Arcadia, Play” 2020),