Reading between the Lines: Use of Space and Body Language in Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls'

‘Women’s roles are often tokenistic in dramatic comedy.’ To what extent do you believe this to be the case in relation to the play you are studying?

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

“Bouncers” and “Shakers” by John Godber are two captivating plays that challenge gender boundaries and explore the concepts of the stereotypical male and female roles within society. Therefore, the aim of our company was to explore gender stereotypes and gender elasticity through our adapted version of “Bouncers and Shakers”. Thus, bring to light the gender boundaries by delving into the roles of masculinity and femininity with us the actors portraying few roles, as well as challenge the perception that females should play female characters and males should play male characters. Furthermore, as we have discovered from previous years of study, the work of practitioner/playwright’s Sarah Kane and Steven Berkoff offer a great flexibility of gender, therefore we looked into their texts, style and performances in our rehearsal process. On the same hand, we strived to create quite eccentric, melodramatic style of the piece, however still showing conventional and truthful characterisations. Thus, the experience we wanted to create for the audience was to make people relate to these stereotypes and raise questions about the construction of gender. We tried to achieve this by showing scenes from everyday life that everyone can relate to, for instance hairdresser saloon, barbershop, pubs and night life.

The Shakespearean play, Much Ado About Nothing, has a unique and an interesting way of presenting the idea of gender, especially for female characters. The play demonstrates two contradictory characters, Hero and Beatrice; one being the “ideal” women during this era and the other being the complete opposite from the “ideal” women. The play challenges as well as reinforces the gender roles during this era with the comparison between the two female characters as well as the attitude of men towards women.

The first essay, “The Roles of Women in British Drama,” represents my first exposure to a new genre of literature. The essay was also one of my first formal and interpretative essays at the college level. As a woman and a student of literature, I feel a special connection to this essay’s topic of women’s roles in literature. In addition, this essay shows my “knowledge of the social, political, philosophical, and religious forces that influence authors and the people they write about” (Oral/Portfolio). After reading some of the most prominent British plays of the twentieth century, I observed a discontinuity in the roles of women in this genre. Sadly, women’s roles in literature were very similar to their role in society. During the twentieth century, women were still trying and failing to emerge out of the roles they had been cast in by a male dominated society. Even though women were almost always portrayed as inferior to men, I found a strong exception to this stereotype through the role of Thomasina. I admire Thomasina’s intelligence and wit, but I truly admire Tom Stoppard for creating this character.

Susan Glaspell’s 1916 play titled “Trifles” uses many elements of drama such as, diction and spectacle through the actions of the two women as they rummage through a unusually messy kitchen to develop complexity and hold the attention of the audience until the very end. Glaspell uses irony and common misconceptions to convey her powerful message “Trifles” is also a play that reflects a clear notion of gender and sex roles. Glaspell, a feminist writer, writes plays that are known for their development of deep, sympathetic characters that have strong principles that are worth standing up for (Holstein 288).

Clare Croft’s article talks about the physical responses to prompts, as she removes the word “girl” from rehearsals and gives them words such as “bossy” or “scarred.” With this she achieves a less hetero-normative performance as it removed the idea’s of femineity and gender. She also talks of the loudness of the male actors in comparison to the females, and how it draws the eye away. This is one way in which IF THERE’S NOT DANCING AT THE REVOLUTION, I’M NOT COMING… achieves feminist goals. By removing the male from the stage, directing the focus to the Julia Croft and paying attention to her representations of gender.

The director wanted to convey the strong and relevant message of the play to the audience, therefore naturalism became essential. As a verbatim piece, the director aimed to avoid overacting and stay true to the characters original intention. Therefore, when adding characterisation, I was careful about being too extravagant with my blocking, body language and facial expressions. For example, Romaine Patterson delivers a powerful monologue, supporting LGBT rights 'I decided that someone needed to stand toe to toe with this guy and show the differences.' The director and I discussed only adding minor movement for Romaine, to avoid overacting. I worked with the director on the timing of my movement. In the last section of my monologue, I was required to wear angel wings and raise them when saying 'And we're calling it Angel Action.' Therefore, we rehearsed the timing, to achieve a natural and polished movement. The director required actors to transform into new characters onstage. The costumes were positioned on stage behind the actors, so transitions were efficient. This Brechtian technique required actors to apply small changes to their costumes to help represent new characters. These fast-paced transitions exhibited my ability to portray several

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

A key concept in Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is the way he uses the gender expectations of the time to create comedy and satirise the characters and in the play, characters are subject to the limitations and expectations because of their gender. Shakespeare acts out against the unfairness of gender roles in society and the inequality between men and women. These gender roles are mainly shown through characters such as Beatrice and Hero and the way they follow and go against the traditional views on women in the Elizabethan era. The use of unconventional characters is used as a comedic feature in ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ to put it into the comedy genre.

Expression is universal. The majority of all people can interpret exasperated sighs, wide eyes, loud voices, clapping, etc. Even when characters are not physically speaking, movies emit numerous messages through actor portrayal. Audiences visually experience characters’ physical reactions which are not included in books. The actors’ individual portrayals of characters in Michael Hoffman’s 1999 film, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, enhance the extreme personalities of characters already established in William Shakespeare’s play.

The above example illustrates not only how the theatrical performance affects the audience, but also how the audience influences its dynamics, development and the characters within it. The actors feel a certain level of acceptance from the viewer, who demands a certain way of depicting the character. Theatre is not just entertainment, itís something much more than that ñ itís education. Theatre should always represent things, rather than

Stage actors have a limited number of times to practice their performance, as a result the use of body language is more essential for stage actors than it is for screen actors.

Within Top Girls, Caryl Churchill explores a range of ideas that can be analysed through lenses to reveal different critical interpretations. Beauvoirian ideas from The Second Sex and Marxist ideas from The Communist Manifesto are used to compare and contrast these ideas, further supporting this an assortment of literary techniques.

What this actually meant in the culture’s sexual economy is perhaps more accurately suggested by meta-theatrical references in plays’ prologues and epilogues. The actress playing Flirt in Wycheley’s The Gentleman Dancing