In present-day society, cultural assumptions often dictate that sexuality and gender are mutually dependent categories and that one posits the other. Societal norms imply that gender is divided into men and women, and that appropriate sexual...

In Cloud Nine, playwright Caryl Churchill examines questions of gender identity, sexuality and individual freedom as they exist within two traditional, oppressive ideological paradigms: colonial imperialism and masculine hegemony. By juxtaposing...

Cloud 9, by Caryl Churchill, is a farce in two contrasting acts that follows the life of a family. The first act takes place in a British colony in Africa, in Victorian times, and the second one takes place in London 1979, but for the members of...

Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill serves as a critique of British social standards—racism, colonialism, and especially sexism, gender roles, and sexual politics. The play takes place in two acts, with Act One set in Victorian Africa and Act Two in London...

Top Girls, an all-female play written by Caryl Churchill in the early 1980s, focuses almost exclusively on the new struggles women faced in trying to become integrated into and obtain success in the workplace. This struggle is emphasized most...

The goals and struggles associated with the feminist movement have undoubtedly changed over time, transforming as increasing freedom and equality shed light on the more complex issues which surround integrating women wholly into society. Machinal,...

Although the characters’ distinctive individual stories are told in Act I of Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls, the overall effect is a cumulative chorus of women’s issues. The dinner scene in Act I establishes thematic foundations upon which...

The landscape of American theater changed after World War II: playwrights felt the need to experiment with both content and style in order to best express their dissatisfaction with contemporary society. Unlike their modernist forbears, the...

Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls, which appeared in 1982, depicts key themes such as feminism and oppression throughout history. Through the main character, Marlene, we are able to see aspects of individualism, as Marlene abandons her own...

In the play Top Girls, Churchill presents women with power as cynical as it is portrayed that they have abandoned their feminine attributes and womanhood to reach success through the use of male qualities. This idea is particularly evident in the...

Second-wave feminism was incredibly significant in shaping women’s rights. Women were fighting for their right to be equals with men, as they were sick of being stuck in the house, being made to raise a family; while their husbands got to have...

German playwright Bertolt Brecht developed his theory of epic theatre as a response to the renaissance of Aristotelian tragic theatre in the latter part of the 1920s (Hecht, 40). Where Aristotle allowed the audience of his theatre the purgation of...