This is a critical commentary for a portion of a script as part of the drama in society module for English Literature at Brighton University. The assignment will include the critical commentary alongside a script written by the student based on/ or an extension of play(s) studied in the module. Thi...
I chose Top Girls as the base for my script and I began the writing process with a re-read of the play.
Originally I found the first act most intriguing and was hoping to write a script based around some of
the characters from history present at Marlene’s dinner, however, upon reading it again, I actually
found Marlene and Joyce’s relationship more interesting and decided to instead focus on their
characters for my play. I was particularly interested Marlene and Joyce’s argument scene and the
class argument that underpinned this fight. I decided to focus on Marlene as my main character and
wanted to explore how she would react if she was not able to abandon her familial duties and was
forced to stay stuck in the working class.
I started by writing character studies for both Marlene and Joyce so I could decide the most
appropriate way they would react to this situation. For example, for Marlene I wrote: independent,
married to her job, believes hard work will get her whatever she wants; and for Joyce I wrote: family
oriented, smart, knows what it’s like to suffer in a lower class. From there I wrote a very loose draft
depicting the premise: Marlene discovers she’s pregnant again. However, this time she’s too far in
for an abortion and Joyce refuses to look after it in for her, like she had done with Angie before. I
wanted to expose the hypocrisy of Marlene’s opinions and put her in a situation that she was unable
to ‘work’ herself out of. I also wanted to draw particular attention to the irony of the situation, so I
purposely made Marlene monologue a speech explicitly stating that working hard can get you
anywhere, right before everything is taken away from her.
This was my first attempt at writing a script and had to learn to rely a lot more heavily on dialogue as
I felt it a better expression of the emotions of the story than what could be shown through long
stage directions or action descriptions. I focused on three ordinary settings for the play so it would
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