Top Girls' Opens Masquers Season

The first production of the 2007-2008 Fairmont State University Masquers season is "Top Girls" by British playwright Caryl Churchill. Performances are Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 4-6, and Friday and Saturday, Oct. 12-13, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 14, at 2 p.m., all in Wallman Hall Theatre. For tickets, call the Box Office at (304) 367-4240.

"Top Girls," which includes adult content, contains two sets of characters--historical and contemporary--whose lives, choices and the consequences of those choices form the foundation of the action of the play. The central focus of the examination of choice is a pair of sisters. The audience is given information about them through the sisters' own words, but the sort of resolution one might expect from a play's end is absent from Churchill's. The presentation of a plot summary will not greatly aid the playgoer, who will be challenged by the manner of the dialogue, the themes, the characters and the anti-Aristotelian nature of Churchill's writing. Instead of a smoothly flowing plot, moving logically from scene to scene, the playwright gives us an episodic development that has been compared to the work of German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

The cast members for this production are Morgan Messenger (Marlene); Celi Oliveto (Waitress/Jeanine/Nell); Adrianne Greenhalgh (Isabella Bird/Joyce/Mrs. Kidd); Holly Wilson (Lady Nijo/Win); Rebecca Muter (Dull Griet/Angie); Dana Sayre (Pope Joan/Louise) and Kimberly Higginbotham (Patient Griselda/Kit/Shona).

Churchill was born in London in 1938. She grew up in both England and Canada and received her B.A. in English from Oxford University. She served as resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre from 1974-75. In the 1980s, she collaborated with companies such as Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, both of which utilized an extended workshop period in their development of new plays and both of which had a considerable impact upon her work. As she matured as a playwright, Churchill used associative dream logic and visionary explorations of modern--essentially urban--life. She is an unabashed feminist, whose work has been claimed by a wide spectrum of feminist critics.