Utopian Space in Caryl Churchill's History Plays: l^ight

Shining in Buckinghamshire and Vinegar Tom

SlAN ADISESHIAH

The PoUtics of Utopia

Considering the Utopian potential of the theatrical space, there has been
surprisingly little attention spent on the exploration of the reladonship
between utopianism and theatre hermeneutics, with some notable
exceptions including Klai? (1991) and Gray (1993). Bearing in mind theatre's
tendency to make frequent use of forms of Utopian expression, at least at the
level of "pretending" and "playing," it is noticeable how infrequently the
two fields are brought together in criticism. In one of the few engagements
with this relationship, the stage is insightfully referred to by Diana Knight as
"a sort of laboratory for constructing the liberated social space of Utopia"
(22). While the novel's form fits the traditional Utopia, wherein the narrator
is usually the guest who is guided around the Utopian literary space, the
exciting multi-dimensionality of the theatrical space—in relation to
utopianism and the expression of the Utopian impulse often present in
drama—has been markedly neglected. Theatre in pardcular as an art form
can be seen as embodying an intense contradicdon of Utopian and and-
utopian features. It is Utopian, in the creadvity of a shared performance
between theatre pracddoners and audience that takes place in a collecdve
space (or "no-space"), but and-utopian in the modes of hierarchy,
exclusivity and discipline that are inscribed in the economics, cultural forms
and insdtudons of bourgeois theatre.
Many of Caryl Churchill's plays display a preoccupadon with
polidcal possibility and reveal traces of Utopian desire. Her 1970s plays, in
pardcular, intersect with and reflect a cultural context that produced
rejuvenated engagements with Utopia. The theatre groups Joint Stock and

Utopian Studies 16.1 (2005): 3-26 © Society for Utopian Studies 2005
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

Monstrous Regiment, who performed the original producdons of her history

plays Ught Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) and Vinegar Tom (1976), were
addidonally committed to Utopian consideradons of non-hierarchical
collaboradve working methods and pardcipated in a system of pay parity.
This essay seeks firsdy to explore the ways in which theatre, Utopia and
space can be brought together theoredcally, and secondly to read Churchill's
history plays with reference to the Utopian dimensions of their producdon
contexts as well as with regard to the potendality of Utopian (historical)
space—both literal (physical spaces) and metaphorical (spaces of
possibility)—that can be traced in the plays.
Ruth Levitas's The Concept of Utopia (1990) has clarified some ofthe
confusion over definidon that has plagued engagements with utopianism. It
has done so by disdnguishing criteria of content, form and funcdon and by
demonstradng the ways in which Utopias have been constructed through
history in terms of their determinadon by one or more of these criteria. The
historical reception of Utopias has similarly deferred to one or more of these
criteria, but without a consensus of priority or unity of definidon, and thus
commentators have often talked past each other. This semandc complexity
can, however, provide a producdve, albeit protean, conceptual framework
within which to explore the polidcal significadon of cultural pracdces. And
Levitas's locadon of "desire," "desire for a better way of being and living"
(7), as one constant feature of utopianism in the face ofa ceaseless variability
in content, form and funcdon, helps to provide some conceptual condnuity.

The polidcal formuladons that an emphasis on "desire" gives rise to

have meant that utopianism has been both celebrated and treated with
suspicion from within and-/counter-capitalist quarters. Feminists,
anarchists, and radical environmentalists have applauded Utopian
transcendence of the dominant order and found useful the privileging of the
imaginadon that accompanies Utopian polidcal pracdce. The dominant
thinking within tradidonal Marxism, in contrast, has displayed an anxiety
over what it sees as the inability of Utopian acdvity to undermine the
dominant order precisely because of its surpassing of, or escape from, it.
Marxists have emphasized instead the importance of a rigorously materialist
approach to polidcal acdon that locates the destruction of the system as
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

dependent upon cridque from within and of the social formadon, as

opposed to what they see as Utopian idealism.
Jennifer Burwell has discussed this problem in terms of what she
calls the Utopian and cridcal impulses, the former of which she sees as
posidng "a self-contained and inaccessible ideal 'elsewhere' where social
contradicdon has always already been resolved" and the latter limidng
"themselves to a negadve hermeneudcs of exposure" (ix). In this
proposidon, the Utopian is without a cridcal reladonship with the
contemporary material world, and the cridcal impulse fails to envisage an
alternadve to it. Burwell's challenge to this hypothesis is that "internal
cridque must confront its inability to escape the social structures of
oppression or do more than merely describe exisdng condidons" and
"utopia must confront its disengagement—as a mere escape—from these
condidons" (ix). However, each impulse—Utopian and cridcal—implicates
the other. In transcending the dominant order, that order—vis-a-vis its
negadon—is implicidy cridqued, and similarly—through cridquing,
undermining, and deconstrucdng the dominant order—the Utopian is the
silenced alternadve that necessarily ardculates itself.
Assuming that one impulse sdmulates the other, however, is not
quite enough. In order for the funcdon of utopianism to act as an effecdve
catalyst to social trans formadon, a materialist cridque must accompany and
work dialecdcally with Utopian projecdon. Ernst Bloch's outline of his
theory concerning the Utopian impulse in The Principle of Hope is dependent
upon the nodon ofa Marxist synthesis of warm and cold streams, explained
by Bloch's translators as "one represendng its undeceived cridcal rigour, the
other its idealisdc and imaginadve recepdvity" (xxvi). Bloch states, "only
coldness and warmth of concrete andcipadon together therefore ensure that
neither the path in itself nor the goal in itself are held apart from one another
undialecdcally and so become reified and isolated" (209). He considers
Utopia to be an attainable reality and socialism to be the modern
manifestadon of the Utopian impulse. Hope is viewed as trainable and as the
facilitator of engaging with the "not-yet," which in turn is fundamental to
progressive change. And while, as Darren Webb has forcefully argued
(2000), the thesis in The Principle of Hope depends upon an unguarded
subjecdvism, Bloch nevertheless responds to what Perry Anderson describes
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

as "a generosity and confidence of vision missing from the mainstream of

historical materialism .. . whose very definition as a science has restricted its
human range" (159).
The revival of interest in Utopian modes of artistic production and
political practice in the aftermath of the international upsurge of political
activity in the 1960s, and particularly the general strike in France and the
global student protests in May 1968, has produced a fresh engagement with
utopiatiism. The counter-culture defines itself largely in terms of its
immediate transcendence of the dominant culture including the dominant
oppositional culture, with this practice treated as both an object of desire in
itself and as effective political strategy. Coterminous with this revival is the
resurgence of "critical" (often femitiist) Utopian cultural and artistic
production with Utopian space becoming more fluid, self-critical, and
dialectical (Moylan).

Utopian Space

Indeed, the metaphor of Utopian space is itself contradictory, for Utopia's

linguistic definition refuses spatial coordinates; it is located nowhere. As
Lyman Tower Sargent puts it, "the primary characteristic of the Utopian
place is its non-existence combined with a topos—a location in time and
space—to give verisimilitude" (5). This internal tension contributes towards
its semantic multi-dimensionalit)', as well as reinforcing its political power,
since its aspirational character is impenetrable precisely because it is a non-
existent but real place or space. This characterisdc can benefit contemporary
theories of social transformation that struggle to resist the total colonization
of space by capital. Michel de Certeau points to "tactics," "ruses," "trickery,"
and "deception" as modes of non-compliance and resistance that are
enacted by "consumers" and "users" in everyday life:

Innumerable ways of playing and foiling the other's

game (Jouer/dejotier le jeti de I'atitre), that is the space
instituted by others, characterise the subtle, stubborn,
resistant activity of groups which, since they lack their
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

own space, have to get along in a network of already

establishedforcesand representations. (18)

de Certeau points to cultural pracdces such as songs, folklore, and stories of

miracles, providing specific examples from the Brazilian peasants of
Pernambuco, as responding to the dominant discourse " 'from aside' with
irrelevance and impertinence in a different discourse, a discourse one can
only believe" (17). Songs, folk stories, and wishful iconography are
considered as resistant to diffusion or co-option by the dominant discourse,
for their terms of production lie outside of the communication system that
structures the articulation of the dominant order.

Theatrical Space

Theatrical space is receptive to the application of Utopian theories on a

number of levels. It has no spatial permanence, for example. The
performance of theatre is temporal, and thus the Utopian "good place" that
is "no-place" has a rich resonance in the transient production of theatre.
Theatrical spaces, even in the form of the traditional theatre building, host a
play temporarily at different times and on different days, and often the play
will tour a variety of theatres—moving from space to space, across the
country or countries—a fact which further enforces its spatial fluidity.
Indeed the theatre groups Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, who
performed Tight Shining and Vinegar Tom., were touring companies which
experimented with space: challenging the static spatial configuration of
(bourgeois) drawing-room theatre's presentation of a seemingly natural and
trans-historical reality as well as deconstructing a similarly conventional use
of space in the social realist and kitchen sink drama of The Angry Young
Men in the 1950s.
Theatrical space is also a liminal space that places the audience in a
liminal role. Baz Kershaw refers to the anthropologist Victor Turner, who
compares the position of the theatre audience with the role of participants in
ritual. Kershaw describes theatre as placing "the participant 'betwixt and
between' more permanent social roles and modes of awareness." He
considers theatre's primary feature to be its inducement of the audience "to
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

accept that the events of the production are both real and not real." He
concludes that theatrical experience is centred on "a ludic role (or frame of
mind) in the sense that it enables the spectator to participate in playing
around witb tbe norms, customs, regulations, laws, wbich govern her life in
society" (138-39). Such a liminal space that hovers between the real and
fictional can be interpreted as a momentary Utopian break in the signification
of the dominant order. Kevin Hetherington discusses this break in relation
to rite of passage rituals where the transitional and unstable liminal place and
phase is superseded by an ideological consolidation and reintegration of the
subject back into society as a new person with a new identity (18). Both
Light Shining and Vinegar Tom, drawing on Brecht's Epic Theatre, seek to
remove the space of comfort that facilitates an audience's apathetic
reception, a reception that is in turn dependent upon their interpellation as
"a collective entity... created in the auditorium . . . on the basis of the
'common humanity' shared by all spectators alike" (Brecht 60). The extent
to which theatre in isolation is able to reintegrate audiences into society with
new identities is debatable; however, it clearly gestures towards the
transformative or the renovative, if only, at times, conservatively vis-a-vis
catharsis or comedic consolidation.
Michel Foucault, in his article "Of Other Spaces" theorizes what he
terms "heterotopias" as places that are "formed in the very founding of
society—which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively
enacted Utopia in which tbe real sites . . . found within the culture, are
simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted" (23). These spaces are
situated outside of all other spaces but stiU contain an identifiable locality.
He proposes tbat "between Utopias and tbese quite other sites, these
heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would
be the mirror." Indeed, "the mirror is, after all, a Utopia, since it is a placeless
place." But simultaneously it is "a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does
exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I
occupy" (23). Theatre, witb its representation of differing and contradictory
sites, and the stage's reflectional qualities clearly fit tbe criteria of a
heterotopia. The theatrical space produces a convergence and interaction of
many spaces that are ordinarily mutually exclusive. The theatrical space thus
hovers between the real and not real in that it is an identifiable site, if only
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

temporarily, but not only in its transience but also in its reference to other
fictional sites it gestures towards the imaginary and the Utopian.
Certain expressions of theatrical language can be regarded as
producing a non-assimilable Utopian mode of significadon: what Antonin
Artaud describes as the "language of symbols and mimicry . . . silent mime-
play . . . attitudes and spatial gestures . . . objective inflection" (99-100).
Michel de Certeau's reference to the Brazilian peasants of Pernambuco, who
respond to the dominant discourse "from aside," for example, can likewise
be located in the theatrical "aside" so frequently used in renaissance drama
as an expression of subversion, transgression and furtiveness, or insolence,
sardony, and parody. Indeed, Churchill's theatrical montage in her history
plays is formed out of snippets of historical documentation, Brechtian
episodic scenes and surreal monologue in Tight Shining, and contemporary
songs, quotations from historical witchhunting manuals, and the appearance
of fifteenth-century witchhunters in the context of a seventeenth-century
witchhunt in Vinegar Tom. This use of montage contributes to the formation
of a plurality of theatrical languages that are not easily appropriated by the
prevailing polidcal discourse.
The reladons of producdon that consdtute theatre are conducive to
the Utopian construcdon of a socialisdc working community. In The Empty
Space, Peter Brook expresses a Utopian vision of the collecdve producdon of
theatre in the following terms:

It is always hard for anyone to have one single aim in

life—in the theatre, however, the goal is clear. From the
first rehearsal, the aim is always visible, not too far away,
and it involves everyone. We can see many model social
patterns at work: the pressure of a first night, with its
unmistakable demands, produce that working-together,
that dedication, that energy and that consolidation of
each other's needs that governments despair of ever
evoking outside wars. (98)

The potendal for a Utopian working pracdce is clearly explored by Bridsh

socialist and feminist theatre groups that flourished in the late 1960s and
1970s such as Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, who worked as a
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

collecdve, used collaboradve working methods with playwrights, and

doubled up in acdng roles thereby avoiding the hierarchical divisions that
tend to be produced by the separadon of actors into major and minor roles
(Itzen 1980; Craig 1980).

Ught Shining in Buckinghamshire

Ught Shining is concerned with the destabilizadon of established history and

the Utopian potendal of historical space in its representadon of English
Revolutionary acdvity on the part of the Ranters, Levellers, and Diggers
during the English Civil War and Revoludon of the 1640s. Max Stafford-
Clark directed the Joint Stock actors in the original producdon and a three-
week workshop involving Churchill, Stafford-Clark, and the actors was
followed by a nine-week script-wridng period where Churchill worked alone.
This was the first dme Churchill had worked with actors except in rehearsal,
and the excitement that this type of collaboradon produced is exemplified by
her comments: "I was constandy amazed by their skills, and fascinated by
the idea of working in this way. We had to learn about something remote
and then find out how we related to it. There was a lot of reading history,
and then finding similar things in our own lives" ("The Common
Imaginadon and the Individual Voice" 6). The history Churchill read
included A. L. Morton's The World of the Ranters (1970) and Christopher
Hill's The World Turned Upside Down (1972). Churchill's engagement with
communist and New Left historicism acts as a defence and reinforcement of
the type of working-class history "from below" produced in Britain by
History Workshop and the Workers' Educadonal Associadon (WEA). It
does so in the context of neoliberalist challenges to it, pardcularly directed at
Hill, from historians, such as J.C. Davis in his Fear, Myth and History (1976),
who sought to subsdtute the revoludonary desire to challenge monarchical
power and enfranchise the populadon with the role of chance and polidcal
infighdng as an explanadon for the cause of the Civil War (which is not
classed as a Revoludon in this formuladon). Churchill's contribudon to this
debate is one that is in broad alliance with Left historiography but is also one

10
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

that places women and gender relations at the center of a representation of

socialist history.
The play is in:two acts that are constructed out of short scenes
where, as Churchill describes "each scene can be taken as a separate event
rather than part of a story" ("A Note on the Production" 184). In the
original production that opened in the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in
September 1976 and, after touring, played at the Royal Court Theatre
Upstairs in London, six actors played twenty-five parts but also swapped
roles. Churchill explains that, "this seems to reflect better the reality of large
events like war and revolution where many people share the same kind of
experience. . . . When different actors play the parts what comes over is a
large event involving many people, whose characters resonate in a way they
wouldn't if they were more clearly defined" ("A Note on the Production"
185). Moreover, the division of labor among the actors is one that promotes
parity and solidarity at the expense of a divisive hierarchy. Thus the
materiality of the play's production signifies a certain utopianism and apdy
lends itself structurally to the representation of silenced plebeian and
feminist histories.
It is also significant that l^ight Shining was written and performed in
1976: at the political crossroads of optimism and the growth of cynicism,
just after the upsurge of working-class and student acdvism, and on the eve
of the disillusionment and pessimism that set in with a more defensive
militancy in the face of the Social Contract (that produced wage restraints,
the Bridsh Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey's capitulation to the
Internadonal Monetary Fund, and an acceleradng monetarism). Churchill
comments, "the revoludonary hopes of the late sixdes and early sevendes
were near enough that we could sdU share them, but we could relate too to
the disillusion of the restoradon and the idea of a revoludon that hadn't
happened" (Ritchie 119). Her introducdon to the play implicates the duality
of the two historical moments:

For a short time when the king had been defeated

anything seemed possible, and the play shows the
amazed excitement of people taking hold of their own
Mves, and their gradual betrayal as those who led them

11
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

realised that freedom could not be had without property

being destroyed. (Introduction, Light Shining 183)

The emphatic (re)creation of a liberating space by sections of society in both

historical periods is clearly referred to in Churchill's introduction as she
closes it by commenting on the Ranters in the final scene, "whose ecstatic
and anarchic belief in economic and sexual freedom was the last desperate
burst of revolutionary feeling before the restoration" (Introduction, Light
Shining \?,?)).
Light Shining is a play that draws heavily on Brecht's ideas of Epic
Theatre. It is a play in two acts containing twenty-one short scenes that can
be characterized by a sense of self-containment producing an episodic
sequence of events and moments that break up a naturalistic narrative. Set in
1647, it dramatizes key moments in the lives of plebeians and radical sect
members of the Levellers, Ranters, and Diggers. Their views are suppressed
under the emerging dominance of Oliver Cromwell and the leadership of his
New Model Army, who have become synonymous with the Parliamentarian
cause and have eclipsed other more radical republican voices. The titie of the
play comes from a pamphlet written by a group of radical Levellers from
Buckinghamshire who promoted the idea of the abolition of property, which
in turn prompted the Digger pamphlet written in 1649 "More Light Shining
in Buckinghamshire." Churchill includes a quotation from the pamphlet in
her introductory notes to the play: "you great Curmudgeons, you hang a
man for stealing, when you yourselves have stolen from your brethren all
land and creatures" (Introduction 183).
There are competing versions of Utopia in the play. Star, who
recruits for Cromwell's army, uses a Fifth Monarchist discourse to
encourage soldiers to sign up. Jerusalem is appealed to as the land of
freedom and plenty which will be established on earth with the coming of
Christ as I<Jng once the current King has been disposed:

Life is hard, brothers, and how will it get better? I tell

you, life in Babylon is hard and Babylon must be
destroyed. . . . When parliament has defeated Antichrist
then Christ will come. Christ will come in person, God
and man, and will rule over England for one thousand

12
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

years. . . . When Christ came, did he come to the rich?

No. He came to the poor. . . . Now is the moment. It
will be too late when Christ comes to say you want to be
saved. Some will be cast into the pit, into the burning
lake, into the unquenchable fire. And some will be
clothed in white Unen and ride white horses and rule
with King Jesus in Jerusalem shining with jasper and
chrysolite. {Light Shining 194-95)

The military and political necessity for the Parliamentarian army to recruit
the poor in large numbers engenders a Christian liberationist language that
appeals to justice and freedom, constructing the poor as Christ's Saints. A
Utopian fantasy of heaven on earth informs the figurative rhetoric through
which political agitation is conducted. This millenarian Utopian discourse is
drawn on again in Cobbe's vision (a character based on the historical Ranter
Abiezer Coppe). The vision is a cataclysmic experience full of apocalyptic
imagery that culminates in Christ's directive to "Go to London, to London,
that great city, and tell them I am coming" (206).
There are different spatial modes of utopianism operating in the
play. One that has a material grounding and poses a critical intervention and
praxis comes from the Diggers who reclaim the land at St. George's Hill,
Surrey for common usage. Gerrard Winstanley announces (his words taken
from an edited version of "The True Levellers Standard Advanced, Or the
state of the Community opened, and presented to the Sons of Men" written
in 1649):

A declaration to the powers of England and to all the

powers of the world, showing the cause why the
common people of England have begun to dig up,
manure and sow corn upon George Hill in Surrey. Take
notice that England is not a free people till the poor that
have no land have a free allowance to dig and labour the
commons. It is the sword that brought in property and
holds it up, and everyone upon recovery of the
conquest ought to return into freedom again, or what
benefit have the common people got by the victory
over the king? (219)

13
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

The Diggers' proto-communist Utopian theory is put into practice. Utopia is

located in the free and common access to and usage of the land that
contrasts with the previous scene—the Putney Debates—wherein
ownership of private property is endorsed as a basic natural right, and
suffrage given only to those with an interest (property) in case the majority
without an interest abolish interests altogether. It is noteworthy that the
activity of the Diggers—an activity that undermines the very basis of
capitalism—that of property relations, occurs off-stage, which is a kind of no-
place. Again, the semantic significance o f t h e good place" that is "no place"
resonates as the audience experiences the Diggers' reclamation of land
indirecdy (through its reporting) and thus imaginatively. In this way, it might
be said that there is something characteristic of Utopian activity that resists
representation.

Utopian space is also constructed out of the destabilization of

pacifying identities which informs the increasing empowerment of many of
the characters in the first act. In the scene entided "Two Women Look in a
Mirror," the audience sees two women experiencing for the first time the
reflection of their whole bodies in a large mirror looted from a huge house
belonging to a Royalist. Frances Gray in her article entitled "Mirrors of
Utopia: Caryl Churchill and Joint Stock" usefully points to the strong
suggestion in this scene of the Lacanian "mirror stage," which is radically
subverted by Churchill who images female solidarity in the mirror as
opposed to an individual and alienated Other. The lack of a stable spatiality
for the mirror's reflection also alludes to Foucault's heterotopia with its
image of the ideal lacking spatial grounding. The surrounding dialogue—
"He'll never come back. We're burning his papers, that's the Norman papers
that give him his lands. That's like him burnt. There's no one over us.
There's pictures of him and his grandfather and his great great—a long row
of pictures and we pulled them down" (207)—additionally suggests an image
of the potentiality of what Marx termed "a class for itself." The idea is that
"a class in itself develops a politicised consciousness of its position vis-a-vis
production relations and becomes "a class for itself," which stimulates
revolutionary activity. Typically of Churchill, she subverts the traditional
male-centred configuration of class politics generally espoused by the

14
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

masculinist vein of Marxism by foregrounding women as central

revolutionary agents of class struggle.
Act 1 is fuU of Utopian drive, containing several spaces of possibilit)'
where a growing sense of active agency develops in a number of characters.
Hoskins, a female vagrant preacher, begins to reclaim the Bible as she
challenges the male Calvinist preacher's reference to St. Paul in his attempt
to silence her. She retorts, "Joel. Chapter two. Verse twenty-eight. 'And it
shall come to pass that I wiU pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons
and your daughters shall see visions. And also upon the servants and upon
the handmaids in those days wiU I pour out my spirit" (201). Briggs, "a
working man," who is recruited by the corn merchant Star into the army,
becomes quickly politicized, joins the Levellers, and is elected as an agitator
by his regiment. He rapidly attempts to secularize the discourse of revolution
and recognizes that the war in Ireland serves only colonial interests. Claxton
(a character based loosely on the historical figure Laurence Clarkson or
Claxton) moves towards the Ranters, and this journey is coterminous with
his increasing insight into the force of ideology. He says, "my body is given
to other women now for I have come to see that there is no sin but what
man thinks is sin. So we can't be free from sin tiU we can commit it purely, as
if it were no sin. Sometimes I lie or steal to show myself that there is no lie
or theft but in the mind" (221). Several characters repudiate their
subordinated subject positions and locate themselves progressively more as
dynamic agents, taking hold of language and political discourse in an
empowering and creative way.
The spaces of possibility begin to close, however, as Act 2 proceeds.
In the penultimate scene, Hoskins, Cobbe, the female vagrant Brotherton,
Briggs and Claxton meet in a tavern and discuss what has happened after the
betrayal at the Putney Debates. There is a certain pathos as the coming of
Jesus is frenziedly and ecstatically appealed to by all except Briggs, who is the
lone secular voice. Utopian struggle is relegated to modes of non-
compliance, the "tactics," "ruses," "trickery," and "deception" outlined by
de Certeau. Cobbe repeatedly swears and asks "Is it nothing but a lifetime of
false words, little games, devil's tricks, ways to get by in the world and keep
safe?" (230). The last scene, entitled "After," explains their circumstances
after the Restoration. The brief speeches have become flat and monologic.

15
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

The last lines of tbe play are Claxton's: "There's an end of outward
preaching now. And end of perfection. Tbere may be a time. I went to the
Barbados. I sometimes bear from tbe world tbat I bave forsaken. I see it
fraught with tidings of tbe same clamour, strife and contention tbat
abounded wben I left it. I give it tbe bearing and that's all. My great desire is
to see and say nothing" (241). Utopia is dissipated and tbe empowering and
liberationist force of language is curtailed by political defeat and censorship.
Seeing (something) and saying nothing becomes the prevalent acdvity (or
inactivity). There is, nonctbeless, an ambiguity over Claxton's meaning. The
audience perceives a glimpse of another Utopian space—Barbados—a
Utopia ripe for tbe accumulation of profit tbat capitalists can construct into a
new and lucrative industry. Questions of whether Claxton is in exile or bas
been absorbed into the system, and whether bis silence is due to repression
or complicity with the dominant order, are critically left unanswered at tbe
end of tbe play.

Vinegar Tom

Written in the same year as Ught Shining and first performed a month after
under the direction of Pam Brighton at tbe Humberside Tbeatre, HuU, in
October 1976, tben on tour, and at tbe ICA and Half Moon Tbeatres,
London, Vinegar Tom was also a collaborative venture (tbis time witb the
socialist-feminist theatre collective Monstrous Regiment) and was again set
in the seventeenth-century. The work on Vinegar Tom began before Ught
Shining, and Churchill completed a first draft during this period, but she left
the play at this stage to work witb Joint Stock, and then returned to Vinegar
Tom after the completion of Ught Shining. There seems to be, tbus, an
explicit inter-textuality and inter-theatricality between these two plays in
terms of their material production tbat reinforce tbeir overlap (in Cburcbill's
words) "both in dme and ideas" (Introduction, Vinegar Tom 129).
Tbe same sense of excitement Cburcbill expressed over working
witb Joint Stock sbows up also in tbis initial period of working witb
Monstrous Regiment. Sbe describes her feelings after meeting the whole
company:

16
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

I left the meeting exhilarated. My previous work had

been completely solitary—I never discussed my ideas
while I was writing or showed anyone anything earlier
than a final polished draft. So this was a new way of
working, which was one of its attractions. Also a touring
company, with a wider audience; also a feminist
company—I felt briefly shy and daunted, wondering if I
would be acceptable, then happy and stimulated by the
discovery of shared ideas and the enormous energy and
feeling of possibilities in the still new company
(Introduction, Vinegar Tom 129).

Churchill conveys the sense of thrill at the newness of this way of working as
well as the stimulation induced by the "discovery of shared ideas" and the
opening up of "possibilities." The terms used signify a passionate
engagement with utopianism.
While the sense of Utopian possibility appears as tangible in the
discourse on the making of Vinegar Tom as it was with Light Shining,
Vinegar Tom is nevertheless more complex in its reladonship with the
expression of Utopian modes. On a basic level, it is more of a campaigning
play. Churchill describes Vinegar Tom as "a play about witches, but none of
the characters portrayed is a witch; it's a play which doesn't talk about
hysteria, evil or demonic possession but about poverty, humiliation and
prejudice, and the view which the women accused of witchcraft had of
themselves" (Fitzsimmons 35). The focus is on producing a drama that
makes explicit the patriarchal connections among the institutions of church,
state, and family that comprise a misogynist matrix of signification. The play
illustrates the formation of misogynist myth-making by using a mixture of
historical and religious documentation and references. These can be seen in
the repeated citation of the witchhunt bible The Malleus Maleficarum: The
Hammer of Witches written in 1484 by the Reverends Heinrich Kramer and
James Sprenger (which was in use for three centuries) as well as Kramer and
Sprenger, in the original production, being played by women dressed as
Edwardian music-hall gents in top hats and tails.
Although there is explicit use of historical material, Churchill
explains in the Introduction to Vinegar Tom that she "didn't base the play on

17
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

any precise historical events, but set it rather loosely in the seventeenth
century" (30). This was "partly because it was the time of the last major
English witchhunts, and partly because the social upheavals, class changes,
rising professionalism and great hardship among the poor were the context
of the kind of witchhunt" (30) in which she was interested. Unlike Ught
Shining., Vinegar Tom addidonally incorporates modern songs by actors out
of character and in contemporary dress, the intervention of which breaks up
the dramatic narrative. Gillian Hanna of Monstrous Regiment (who played a
poor village girl, Alice, in the original producdon) explains this intervention
in terms of their wish to "smash that regular and acceptable dramadc form"
since they "didn't want to allow the audience to get off the hook by
regarding it as a period piece, a piece of very interesting history" (9). In this
sense, it is a more confrontadonal play, one that seeks to arrest the audience
with a belligerent mode of representadon that removes any "neutral" space
where the spectator may wish to reside. It thus offers an alternadve to
Fredric Jameson's characterizadon of the postmodern obliteradon of
"distandation" or the effacement of cridcal space (87).
The play may not engage straightforwardly with Utopian modes and
seems to depend more on the cridcal impulse as its driving force, but there
are some powerful Utopian representadons. Firsdy, as Hanna mendoned, the
"smashing" of convendonal theatrical form that Vinegar Tom so explicidy
enacts recalls Bloch's theorizing of history and utopianism: the enclosed
historical narradve is disassembled and blast through with contemporary
provocadve moments. There is not only a reconstrucdon of predominandy
poor and unconvendonal women's histories, but also a destabilizadon of
bourgeois historiography and a counter-balancing of other (male) socialist
narradves such as Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1952). While the gids in
Salem in 1692 are similarly not witches and are, in the main, represented as
vicdms of patriarchal hegemony, the profundity of the parable of
McCarthyism is, nevertheless, located in the flawed but essendally good male
figure of John Proctor, with Abigail Williams displaying the qualifies of
beauty, lust, guile, fickleness, and deviousness—typical construcdons that
comprise the object of the male gaze.
Vinegar Tom relegates the central masculinist consciousness of The
Crucible to the scarcely drawn and unnamed (generic) "Man" in Scene 1,

18
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

together with surly Jack (the tenant farmer who induces little more than
hostility from the audience), and stereotypes ofthe sadistic and authoritarian
Doctor (an off-stage character), the witchhunter Packer, and the fathers of
witchhunting: Kramer and Sprenger. Female characters dominate the
dramatic landscape, and, although not represented naturalistically, they,
nevertheless, form the focus of a fully rounded community to which the
audience responds. The differences between the women are not idealistically
papered over and, indeed, serve as an obstacle to survival and change;
however, a common Utopian thread of female desire can be traced that
echoes throughout the play and connects the female characters in a network
of gendered subjectivity.
The poor village girl Alice and the landowner's daughter Betty, for
example, are irreconcilably differentiated in class terms—so much so that it
becomes a life and death distinction as Betty is saved from hanging solely
because of her class status—but they nevertheless echo each other in a
Utopian yearning to transcend their immediate environment. Alice's repeated
request in Scene 1 to the unnamed Man to take her with him to Scotland or
London is matched in the following scene by Betty's articulation of her
longing to escape the estate and—by implication—her role: "on my way
here I climbed a tree. I could see the whole estate. I could see the other side
ofthe river. I wanted to jump off. And Oy" {Vinegar Tom 140). Even Jack's
self-righteous wife, Margery, reveals hints of Utopian yearning, a yearning
that is reflected in the insinuation of repressed sexual desire as she sings a
song to accompany her struggle to churn the butter, "come butter come,
come butter come. Johnny's standing at the gate waiting for a butter cake.
Come butter come, come butter come" (143). This song gathers more
significance from its positioning in the scene immediately after the song that
mournfully narrates the development of women's sexuality, "Nobody
Sings."
As in Light Shining there are attempts to occupy a more self-
empowered subject posidon, particularly by Alice, who in her conversation
with the Man just after they have had sex at a roadside (an ambiguous or
liminal space) endeavors to articulate herself as a subject, as opposed to an
object, of desire: "I don't like a man too smooth" (135). Further on in the
scene, she echoes the discourse of the Ranters in Light Shining as she says

19
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

"any time I'm happy someone says it's a sin" (136). Inidally the man
collaborates with this point of view by alluding to the utopianism of the
political culture of radical sects in London:

There's some in London say there's no sin. Each man

has his own religion nearly, or none at all, and there's
women speak out too. They smoke and curse in the
tavern and say flesh is no sin for they are God
themselves and can't sin. The men and women lie
together and say that's bUss and that's heaven and that's
no sin. (136)

But Alice's struggle to construct an autonomous space from which she can
assert an empowered subjectivity is thwarted by the man, who, once asked if
he will take her with him, retorts, "take a whore with me?" He scoffs, "what
name would you put to yourself? You're not a wife or a widow. You're not a
virgin. Tell me a name for what you are" (137). His power to switch swiftly
from camaraderie to misogyny is underlined. This dialogue also
demonstrates that Alice requires a man's "generosity" if she is to locate a
wider range of modes of self-asserdon.
A space that signifies a kind of pro-female or "womanist" Utopia—
in Alice Walker's sense of the term—is Ellen's cottage. EUen, the cunning
woman, tries to support other women in their self-determination. She says
to Alice's friend Susan, who is pregnant for the sixth or seventh dme after
miscarrying several times and almost dying during childbirth, "take it or
leave it, my dear, it's one to me. If you want to be rid of your trouble, you'U
take it. But only you know what you want" (154). Unlike the professional
male doctor who administers discipline, Ellen promotes choice. Betty also
enjoys Ellen's unconventional space. She asks, "Can I come again
sometimes just to be here? I like it here" (156). Ellen's cottage becomes a
counter-site, a heterotopia where (mosdy) women come to enjoy a brief spell
away from the patriarchal domination of their everyday lives.
There are two other types of Utopia imaged. A fascist Utopia is
ironically signified in the song "Something to Burn":

20
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

Sometimes it's witches, or what will you choose?

Sometimes it's lunatics, shut them away.
It's blacks and it's women and often it's Jews.
We'd all be quite happy if they'd go away.
Find something to burn.
Let it go up in smoke.
Burn your troubles away. (154)

As well as referring explicidy to the activity of scapegoating, this song also

sardonically conjures up the fascist Utopia with women in their place,
"lunadcs" locked up, and no Jewish or black people making trouble and
"infecdng" a white male Utopia. A further ironic Utopian image is Ellen's
paindng of Betty's life as a rich wife:

Your best chance of being left alone is marry a rich

man, because it's part of his honour to have a wife who
does nothing. He has a big house and rose garden and
trout stream, he just needs a fine lady to make it
complete and you can be that. You can sing and sit on
the lawn and change your dresses and order the dinner.
(169)

This description funcdons paradoxically as a reminder of Betty's class

privilege (Ellen condnues: "What would you rather? Marry a poor man and
work all day?" [169]), and serves as an acknowledgement of the hollowness
of, and the lack of self-determinadon that complicates, female class
"dominance."

Conclusion

Commitment to the potendal of human emancipadon evident in many of

Churchill's plays is often reflected in a representadon of social acdvity where
individuals employ various forms of non-compliance, disobedience, and
resistance in the most intransigent and repressive of contexts, as well as
more confident displays of solidarity, confrontadon, and coUecdve uprising.
Utopian theory facilitates the exploradon of the interacdon between

21
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

different modes of non-cooperadon with, and challenge to, oppressive

networks of power. Light Shining is concerned with competing versions of
Utopia, Utopian spaces, and Utopian processes. These compedng versions
echo the debates over theory, tacdcs, and strategy that occurred within Left
and counter-cultural circles. Donald Campbell in "Tradidonal Movement"
comments: "parallels with our own dme exist in plenty—the scene depicting
the Putney debates reminded me very much of the squabbles of the Bridsh
Labour Party" (20). Meenakshi Ponnuswami in her ardcle "Fanshen in the
English Revolution: Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire"
additionally points to the connecdons between the carnivalesque
transgressive pracdces of the Ranters in their performadvity of liberation—
their swearing, drunkenness, pracdce of free sexuality—and these Utopian
tendencies within the contemporaneous counter-culture. The Diggers'
pracdce of reclaiming the land, contrasdng with the Levellers' negodadon
with the parliamentarians, is similarly resonant of the competing strategies
and tacdcs that dominated the Bridsh Left in the 1970s. Light Shining
explores a range of differing forms of the Utopian, represendng weaknesses
as well as strengths of Utopian modes of political acdvity, and thus
addidonally indmates the importance of engaging with both the critical and
Utopian impulses in the exercise of polidcal theory and pracdce. The
limitadons of the performadvity of immediate liberadon, such as the
Ranters' final outburst of miUenarianism, are emphasized, but the restricdve
range of the cridcal impulse of the Levellers is similarly shown to be
vulnerable to absorpdon by the system. Churchill thus undertakes what
Bloch's Principle of Hope proposed, for Light Shining wrenches open the
past, both to support the re-construcdon of silenced histories and to
intervene in the present and change the future.
Like Light Shining., Vinegar Tom works as an engagement with the
present as well as the past. In the context of acdve polidcal pracdce by the
Women's Liberadon Movement (WLM), the play was peculiarly topical in
the mid-1970s. Its concern with subjecdvity and consciousness, sexuality
and women's health, contracepdon, abordon and marriage are all issues at
the forefront of concerns of women more generally as well as the WLM. As
part of its implicadon of the duality of past and present. Vinegar Tom
explores the dystopian impulse that informs both a patriarchal configuradon

22
 Adiseshiah Utopian Space

of oppressive structures and the complicit behaviour within these structures

of some female characters such as the bitter tenant farmer's wife, Margery,
and the witchhunter's assistant. Goody. Complicity is a key issue that caused
divisions within the WLM. Despite this sort of behavior, both tbe cridcal
and Utopian impulses are strongly manifested in characters such as Alice and
her mother, Joan, who, faced with hanging for witchcraft, remain defiant to
the end. Joan's last speech before her hanging (in which she performs the
role of a witch—now a Utopian fantasy of power—claiming to be the cause
of trouble, misfortune, and accidents in the village over the last ten years)
provides her with a momentary space from where she assumes an active and
commanding persona. She fleetingly transcends the ideological parameters
imposed upon her as she temporarily occupies the demonized but powerful
role that she has been accused of, claiming omnipotently, "the great storm
and tempest comes when I call it" (173). Hence, although the polidcal
significadon of the play seems to funcdon predominantly at the cridcal pole,
there are traces of Utopia that exist in a specifically female matrix of space,
language and consciousness, a matrix which in turn is figured as a mode of
survival and local resistance.
Light Shining contributes towards the construcdon of socialist
history with its celebradon of the courage, political enlightenment, and
acdvism of radicals during the English Revoludon. Although it dramadzes
their polidcal defeat, the play's Utopian goal of collective revoludon and
individual freedom is represented posidvely through a bricolage of various
Utopian and cridcal pracdces. Vinegar Tom stages a history that is often
trivialized—or even ignored—^in mainstream history and underesdmated in
socialist historiography. It can be read as a less acknowledged but adjacent
history to the 1640s English revoludonary narradve. The Utopian yearning
for a wholly different social landscape is played out amidst an anti-utopian
setdng where fear, death, division, and poverty form the material condidons
of this community. The angry tenor of Vinegar Tom is a corollary of tbe
continuing sidelining of the witchhunts for over four centuries, and its
confrontadon of the full-horror of this pracdce an insistence on the
rethinking of the way this period is ardculated.

23
 UTOPIAN STUDIES 16.1

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