Caryl Churchill's Appropriation of the Alienation Effect

137 Pages·2017·3.82 MB·English

Re-viewing History: Caryl Churchill’s Appropriation
of the Alienation Effect

By

Miss Kopphorn Maneerat

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Masters of Arts in English Language and Literature
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Thammasat University
2011

Abstract

Caryl Churchill’s constant affirmation of her socialist-feminist position in
contemporary theatre goes hand in hand with her career-long theatrical
experimentalism. Early in her career, diverse historical subjects captured Churchill’s
interest and inspired her playwriting. Exploring such diversified historical topics as
seventeenth century witchcraft, Victorian Africa, and the world’s disparate historical
women, Churchill’s early plays share such non-conventional elements as non-
linearity, cross and multiple casting, and disrupted songs and narrative—often
identified as being influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect. This thesis
examines three of Churchill’s early plays—Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine (1978),
and Top Girls (1982)—and the playwright’s appropriation of Brecht’s alienation
effect and invention of non-conventional techniques as keys to understanding her
unique dramaturgy as well as her political and artistic positions. Grounded in a
feminist framework which acknowledges the potential of Brecht’s theory for
addressing class and gender concerns in a socialist feminist theatre, this study
particularly analyzes how the use of Brecht’s alienation effects and her own inventive
theatrical artistry in the selected plays influence the audience to re-view the past from
a different perspective and challenge the hegemonic versions of history constructed
by gender, class and/or racial dominants.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dr.
Prapassaree Kramer. Without her expertise and compassionate support, this thesis
would not have been possible. I am indebted to Ajarn Jeffery Kramer’s insights and
generous assistance. I greatly appreciate the unparalleled knowledge and constructive
criticism of my thesis committee, Assoc. Prof. Chusak Pattarakulvanit and Dr. Ralph
Flores.
In loving memory, I could never thank my father enough for the
confidence he had in me and my goals. I am grateful for my mother’s and sister’s love
and sacrifice. I would also like to express my appreciation of my Aunt Ram for
lending a hand when help was most needed. I sincerely thank my graduate classmates
for their continuous empathy, and Chutarat Banthakit for her unwavering friendship
and encouragement. My heartfelt thanks to Brian Persse for his faith in me and for
always being there.

Kopphorn Maneerat
Thammasat University
2011
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Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ........................................................................................................ (1)

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... (2)

Chapter
1. Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

Brecht’s Alienation Effect............................................................. 3
History and Alienation Effect in Churchill’s Works .................... 7
Views on Brecht and Churchill ..................................................... 11

2. Reviewing Witch Hunting: Disrupted Narrative & Disrupting Performances in
Vinegar Tom ...................................................................................... 14

Hegemonic History of Witch-Hunting .......................................... 15
Re-viewing Witch-hunting: Disrupted Narrative & Disrupting
Performances in Vinegar Tom ....................................................... 17

3. Re-viewing the “Top Girls”: Verbal and Temporal Collapses in Top Girls
............................................................................................................ 42

Hegemonic History of “Top Girls” .............................................. 43
Re-viewing the “Top Girls”: Verbal and Temporal Collapses .... 48

4. Re-viewing the Victorian Empire: Visual and Temporal Incongruities in Cloud
Nine .................................................................................................... 76

Hegemonic History of the Victorian Empire ............................... 77
Re-viewing the Victorian Empire: Visual and Temporal Incongruities
in Cloud Nine ......................................................................... 80

5. Conclusions ........................................................................................ 113

References ..................................................................................................... 119

Appendices

A. Structure of Vinegar Tom................................................................... 126
B. Structure of Top Girls ........................................................................ 128
C. Structure of Cloud Nine………………………….............................. 129

Biography ....................................................................................................... 131
Chapter 1

Introduction

―Whatever you do your point of view is going to show somewhere. It usually only gets
noticed and called ‘political’ if it’s against the status quo.‖ 1
Caryl Churchill

―For art to be ‘unpolitical’ means only to ally itself with the ‘ruling’ group‖ 2
Bertolt Brecht

Caryl Churchill (1938) is a British dramatist who self-proclaimed her
position in the contemporary theatre as a socialist feminist playwright. Churchill
states, ―Of course socialism and feminism aren't synonymous but I feel strongly about
both and wouldn't be interested in a form of one that didn't include the other.‖3 In her
body of work, the playwright‘s social commitment goes hand in hand with her career-
long theatrical experimentalism. Churchill is ―widely considered to be one of the most
innovative playwrights to have emerged in post-war British theatre‖ (Tycer, p. 4).
According to Anthony Neilson, Churchill never ceases ―to enquire, to confound, to
keep challenging herself and her medium‖ (Rabellato, p. 165). Greatly esteemed by
theatre critics and scholars are the playwright‘s ―sure theatrical instincts,‖ ―poetic
precision, dark wit and inexhaustible creativity‖ (Aston & Diamond, 2009, p. i;
Randall, 1988, p. xi). Common in her dramaturgy is anachronism, cross-dressing and

1 Betsko, K., & Koenig, R. (1987). Interviews with contemporary women
playwrights (1 ed.). New York: Beech Tree Books. Qtd. in Aston and Diamond, 1.
2 Brecht, B. (1964). Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Auesthetic
(J. Willett, Trans.). London: Eyre Methuen. 196.
3 Churchill, interview in Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig (eds.), 78.
Qtd. in Aston and Diamond, 4.
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role doubling, use of mix genre of art much identified with Bertolt Brecht‘s theatre.4
Provided that the British alternative theatre movement in the 1970s was interested in
Brecht‘s theatrical practice, it is unlikely to imagine that Churchill‘s theatrical
experimentalism during the time was not influenced by Brecht. The playwright
acknowledges Brecht‘s influence on her drama, albeit ―informal and often
unconscious‖ (Janelle Reinelt, 1994, p. 86). Churchill says,
I don‘t know either the plays of the theoretical writings in great detail
but I‘ve soaked up quite a lot about him over the years. I think for
writers, directors and actors working in England in the seventies his
ideas have been absorbed into the general pool of shared knowledge
and attitudes, so that without constantly thinking of Brecht we
nevertheless imagine things in a way we might not have without him.5
Harold Bloom states, ―[P]oetic influence need not make poets less
original; as often it makes them more original…‖ (p. 7). Brechtian traces in
Churchill‘s drama, I believe, are not negation to her achievement but key to
understanding her political and artistic position. In addition to influences of Brecht,
diverse historical subjects captured Churchill‘s interest and inspired her early works.
The scope of this study is grounded in Churchill‘s topic of history and her treatment
of Brecht‘s theatrical influence as well as her development of theatrical artistry.
Churchill‘s early works were shaped by political climate, feminist movement, and
fringe theatre movement of the 1970s England. I will investigate the diversified

4 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a German poet, playwright and theatre
director whose theatrical theory and practice of epic theatre greatly influences the
twentieth century dramaturgy. Brecht‘s theatre was influenced by various theatrical
sources, for example the Elizabethan and Jacobean use of songs and music, Erwin
Piscator‘s Political Theatre, Frank Wedekind‘s cabaret, Karl Velentin‘s music hall
comedy, and Charlie Chaplin‘s silent film. His most consistent theatrical source is
Marxism. See Brooker, 1994, p. 186.
5 Personal letter from Caryl Churchill, February 23, 1985. Qtd. in Reinelt,
J. (1994). After Brecht : British epic theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press. p. 86.
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historical topics in Churchill‘s concurrently-written plays Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud
Nine (1979), and Top Girls (1982) and demonstrate how the historical subjects are
dramatized by the dramatist‘ adaptation and appropriation of Brecht‘s alienation
effect. Exploring diversified historical topics of the seventeenth century witchcraft,
the Victorian Africa, and the world‘s disparate historical women, Churchill‘s
appropriation of alienation effect and development of non-naturalistic techniques
allow the audience to see afresh the popular version of history which is taken for
granted.

Brecht’s Alienation Effect

The movement of the British theatre was dramatically influenced by
Brecht‘s theatre, most notably by the Berliner Ensemble‘s visit to England in 1956
and the 1964 publication of John Willet‘s compilation of Brecht‘s critical essays
(written between 1918-1956) Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic.
Displaying similar concerns for social conditions, the repertoire of Brecht and
Churchill was heavily influenced by the political backdrop. For Brecht, it was from
World War I and the rise of Marxism. For Churchill, it was from the feminist
movement in England, which is fundamentally working-class and ―heavily socialist‖
(Janelle Reinelt, 1996, p. 36). According to Peter Brooker, Brecht‘s theatre‘s
objective is to ―trigger change in the material world‖ by changing the viewers‘ views
(Brooker, 1994, p. 186). Likewise, Churchill‘s theatre is committed to challenge ―the
status quo.‖ It is not surprising that the British feminist dramatists, including
Churchill, find Brecht‘s theatrical theory invaluable. As the epigraphs to this chapter
testify, both dramatists have pledged allegiance to theatre, as an artistic tool for social
critique.
To understand and analyze Churchill‘s appropriation of Brecht‘s
alienation effects, it is important to comprehend, first, Brecht‘s theory of
Verfremdungeffekt or alienation effect/ distancing effect. Brecht‘s cornerstone
Verfremdungseffekt resulted from his opposition to the conventional theatre (dramatic
theatre in Brecht‘s term), which presents performance as taken from reality. This kind
of theatre, Brecht states, heads towards ―a pre-given end‖ and embodies the
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deterministic notion ―that human nature is unalterable‖ (Brecht, 1964, p. 37). This
produces a passive spectator who identifies themselves with characters and therefore
unable to observe critically, as Brecht states in ―Theatre for Pleasure of Theatre for
Instruction,‖
The dramatic theatre‘s spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too –
Just like me – It‘s only natural – It‘ll never change – The sufferings of
this man appal me, because they are inescapable – That‘s great art; it
all seems the most obvious thing in the world – I weep when they
weep, I laugh when they laugh.
(p. 71)
Brecht coined the German term Verfremdungseffekt to label an approach
to theatre that discouraged involving the audience in an illusory narrative world and
the characters‘ emotions. The term is commonly translated into English as alienation.
Brecht states that alienation effect is ―designed to free socially-conditioned
phenomena from that stamp of familiarity which protects them against our grasp
today‖ by means of a representation that ―allows us to recognize its subject, but at the
same time makes it seem unfamiliar‖ (emphasis added, Brecht, p. 192). In other
words, alienation effect is for theatre to negate the notion that human conducts and
incidents are natural and unchangeable but socially constructed, and therefore can be
altered. Brecht summarizes alienation effect as ―laying bare society‘s causal network‖
(109).
An authoritative author/translator of Brecht‘s works John Willet states
that alienation effect ―show[s] everything in a fresh and unfamiliar light, so that the
spectator is brought to look critically even at what he has so far taken for granted‖
(Willett, 1959, p. 179). Willet explains that it is a ―matter of detachment, of
reorientation‖ and ―the emphasis on attitudes‖ (179, 183). Once familiar things are
made strange in theatre, it creates distance for the audience and prevents him/her from
emotional identification with the characters. Therefore, the audience is encouraged to
observe, question and interpose their judgment critically. As opposed to ―the familiar
and predictable,‖ Brecht‘s alienation effect lets the audience see with ―surprise and
illumination‖ (Brooker, p. 191). The desired alienation effect is for audience to say,