Friday, May 2, 2014

My hero / Caryl Churchill by Sadie Jones

 


With Top Girls Caryl Churchill presented us with a female global humanity.
Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian


My hero: 

Caryl Churchill by Sadie Jones

I was 15 when I went to see Top Girls. Churchill filled in a great chunk of what it is, and has always been, to be a woman – and I am grateful to her

Interview Caryl Churchill by the people who know her best

Caryl Churchill / In theatre, it's all about the surprise


Friday 2 May 2014


G

irls growing up in the 1980s were not given heroes. We were to be the new generation but lacked what men have in abundance, the rich mythology of the past. It felt as if there were no baseline to being female, no background. We learned about the women's suffrage movement at school and that we owed them everything, but being able to vote was old news, and so basic as to be pretty unimpressive.

Popular culture showed us The Victim and The Ball-breaker, insidiously personified in Dynasty's wimpy wife Krystle and scary-ex Alexis. We knew about feminism, of course, and that women ought not be objectified, that Wonder Woman did not count as a heroine because she was too sexy and nice, and that, mystifyingly, our first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had somehow "set us back 30 years".

It was 1983 and I was 15 when I went to the Royal Court with my parents and sister to see Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. We were told it was a play "about being a modern woman", and at first it delivered something like the story I was anticipating, opening with Marlene, a businesswoman, celebrating her success with a dinner party. But then, dazzling and surreal, the stage filled up with the female past: Pope Joan; a medieval Japanese courtesan; Isabella Bird, a multitude of stories, historical or fictional – leaders, victims, fighters, liars, lovers. For the first time I was presented with a female global humanity. When the narrative returned to Marlene's story, she was contextualised by that breathtaking pageant.

I could not have anticipated what Churchill did with Top Girls, not just telling unpalatable truths about Thatcher's women, but filling in a great chunk of what it is, and has always been, to be a woman. She is a hero, and I am grateful to her.

THE GUARDIAN






2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)

(PAGE 8)

2013

(PAGE 5)
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)

(PAGE 4)



(PAGE 3)

2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016





Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)