Top Girls – Act Two

1. Top Girls – Act Two Starter: Our key word for today’s lesson is: Repartee Working with a partner, write down what you think the definition for this word could be. Key Word: Repartee – The ability to make witty replies and remarks. It is often a key component of both Shakespearean and Restoration Comedy. Learning Objective – to explore how Churchill uses repartee for comic effect in Act Two.

2. Task: Working with a partner, read through the extract from Act 2, Scene 3 and then answer the following questions (finding evidence to support your ideas): Who is talking in this scene? What is their relationship like with each other? How do you know? What are they talking about? Does the topic change at all? Why and who changes it? What do we learn about Derek at the end of their conversation? Can you link this to any other themes in the play? What do you notice about the way both characters speak? Are there any interruptions/overlaps? Why why/not? How might their dialogue be related to our key word: Repartee?

3. Task: Remind the person sitting to you the AO’s for your coursework … AO1: Articulate creative, informed and relevant responses to literary texts, using appropriate terminology and concepts, and coherent, accurate written expression. AO2: Demonstrate detailed critical understanding in analysis the ways in which structure, form and language shape meanings in literary texts.

4. AO3: Explore connections and comparisons between different literary texts, informed by interpretations of other readers. AO3 has two parts to it. It requires that you make connections and comparisons across texts and that when you make these connections you are aware that you are not dealing with absolutes – there are other ways in which the texts can be interpreted, in which case different connections can be made. AO4: Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received. Contexts of production: The circumstances that might affect a text at the time of its writing. Contexts of reception: The circumstances that might affect a text at the time of its being read.

5. Task: You are now going to write a paragraph about the extract we have just read in class. AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4 What might our success criteria be?

6. Task: You are now going to peer assess each other’s paragraph before I mark them. Around your partner’s paragraph I would like you mark the relevant AO’s (and key words: language, structure, creative response). AO1: Articulate creative, informed and relevant responses to literary texts, using appropriate terminology and concepts, and coherent, accurate written expression. AO2: Demonstrate detailed critical understanding in analysis the ways in which structure, form and language shape meanings in literary texts. AO3: Explore connections and comparisons between different literary texts, informed by interpretations of other readers. AO4: Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received.

7. Reading Top Girls as a feminist text helped me to find ways to dramatise the price women pay for success in a patriarchal society. For me, and, I hope, for the spectators who attended this production, Marlene and the other women of the play embodied the dangerous and complex situation faced by many women in today’s world, a world in which the consequences of success are almost as frightening as those of failure. She reads the dramatic comedy of Top Girls as a play that asks important questions about women’s roles in both the theatre and society. There are relatively few dramatic comedies that have an all-female cast. She believes that the comedy of Top Girls has a serious function: to expose the difficulties women face in a patriarchal world.

8. Michael Coveney Coveney demonstrates that the passage of time has allowed the play’s comedy to be further foregrounded. This can sometimes happen with more contemporary comedy, as people are able to look back over more recent history. Comedy can therefore help us to reflect on changing attitudes over time. The position of women at work and in the home is very different now compared with the situation in 1982, when this play first emerged.

9. Discuss the use of humour as a strategy to engage the audience and examine the balance between serious and comic in the play.