Gender, Politics, Subjectivity: Reading Caryl Churchill.

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation approaches three plays written by British playwright Caryl Churchill (1938- ): Cloud Nine (1979), Top Girls (1982), and Blue Heart (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. 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.