Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 25.1
Unit 25 Ways of reading drama
Section 6 Media: from text to performance

Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine (1979; published 1996) is divided into two acts, the first of which ’takes place in a British colony in Africa in Victorian times’, while the second ’takes place in London in 1979. But for the characters it is

twenty-five years later’. Role doubling occurs through having actors play different parts in Acts I and II. The list of characters for Act I specifies the use of cross-dressing:

Clive, a colonial administrator

Betty, his wife, played by a man

Joshua, his black servant, played by a white

Edward, his son, played by a woman

Victoria, his daughter, a dummy

Maud, his mother-in-law

Ellen, Edward’s governess

Harry Bagley, an explorer

Mrs Saunders, a widow

The first scene of Act One opens as follows:

Low bright sun. Verandah. Flagpole with union jack. The Family -

Clive, Betty, Edward, Victoria, Maud, Ellen, Joshua

All [sing]

Come gather, sons of England, come gather in your pride.

Now meet the world united, now face it side by side;

Ye who the earth’s wide corners, from veldt to prairie, roam. From bush and jungle muster all who call old England ’home’.

Then gather round for England,

Rally to the flag,

From North and South and East and West

Come one and all for England!

Clive:

This is my family. Though far from home

We serve the Queen wherever we may roam

I am a father to the natives here,

And father to my family so dear.

[He presents Betty. She is played by a man.]

My wife is all I dreamt a wife should be,

And everything she is she owes to me.

Betty:

I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life

Is to be what he looks for in a wife.

I am a man’s creation as you see,

And what men want is what I want to be.

[Clive presents Joshua. He is played by a white.]

Clive:

My boy’s a jewel. Really has the knack.

You’d hardly notice that the fellow’s black.

Joshua: My skin is black but oh my soul is white.

I hate my tribe. My master is my light.

I only live for him. As you can see,

What white men want is what I want to be.

[Clive presents Edward. He is played by a woman.]

Clive:

My son is young. I’m doing all I can

To teach him to grow up to be a man.

Edward:

What father wants I’d dearly like to be.

I find it rather hard as you can see.

[Clive presents Victoria, who is a dummy, Maud, and Ellen.] Clive:

No need for any speeches by the rest.

My daughter, mother-in-law, and governess.

All [sing]

O’er countless numbers she, our Queen,

Victoria reigns supreme;

O’er Afric’s sunny plains, and o’er

Canadian frozen stream;

The forge of war shall weld the chains of brotherhood secure;

So to all time in ev’ry clime our Empire shall endure.

Then gather round for England,

Rally to the flag,

From North and South and East and West

Come one and all for England!

[All go except Betty. Clive comes.]

Betty: Clive?

Clive: Betty. Joshua!

[Joshua comes with a drink for Clive]

Betty: I thought you would never come. The day’s so long without you.

Clive: Long ride in the bush.

Betty: Is anything wrong? I heard drums.

Clive: Nothing serious. Beauty is a damned good mare. I must get some new boots sent from home. These ones have never been right. I have a blister.

Betty: My poor dear foot.

Clive: It’s nothing.

Betty: Oh but it’s sore.

Clive: We are not in this country to enjoy ourselves. Must have ridden fifty miles. Spoke to three different headmen who would all gladly chop off each other’s heads and wear them round their waists.

Betty: Clive!

Clive: Don’t be squeamish, Betty, let me have my joke. And what has my little dove done today?

Betty: I’ve read a little.

Clive: Good. Is it good?

Betty: It’s poetry.

Clive: You’re so delicate and sensitive.

1 What dramatic functions do the opening song and the embedded introduction of the characters perform? Do any of the following terms apply: prologue; chorus; narrative exposition; dramatic irony; realism; alienation effect?

1.1 What do the opening song and introduction of characters imply about (a) the colonial situation; and (b) the colonial family?

1.2 What are the implications or effects in the song and introduction of characters of the fact that (a) Betty is played by a man; (b) Joshua is played by a white; (c) Edward is played by a woman; and (d) Victoria is ’played’ by a dummy?

2 What does the opening of the prose section - from ’All go except Betty’ to ’You’re so delicate and sensitive’ - imply about (a) the colonial situation; and (b) gender relations in the colonial family?

2.1 What are the implications or effects in the prose section of the fact that Betty is played by a man?

3 Which of the effects identified in your answers to questions 1 and 2 can be discerned from reading the dramatic text (as we have given it), and which could only be discerned from seeing the play performed?

4 What relationship is there, if any, between the play’s use of theatrical devices (including cross-dressing) and the play’s representation of British colonialism?

Reading

Abrams, M.H. (1993) A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th edn, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Aristotle (1965) On the Art of Poetry, in T.S. Dorsh (ed.) Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin.

Lennard, John and Luckhurst, Mary (2002) The Drama Handbook: A Guide to Reading Plays, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pickering, Kenneth (2003) Studying Modern Drama, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Preminger, Alex and Brogan, T.V.F. (eds) (1993) The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wallis, Mick and Shepherd, Simon (1998) Studying Plays, London: Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press.

Worthen, W.B. (2000) The Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama, 3rd edn, Boston, MA: Heinle.