Discuss and compare how Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky deploy the conventions of Dialogue and Objectives/Obstacles, and asses the connection between these formal choices and the meaning and impact of the play.

The conventions of dialogue and objectives and obstacles are intertwined through the playwright’s portrayal of character and in the process of creating dramatic conflict. Dialogue is a revelatory device, where action is conveyed through speech to communicate character objectives; it is ‘the chief means by which the premise is proved, the characters revealed, and the conflict carried out’.[1] Dialogue reveals subtext as well as character and motive, and communicates ‘the internal dimension of the plot…[through] psychological, or inner action'[2] within each character, whose objectives become apparent through the translation of thought into speech and its function in drama.

Character objectives are defined as goals or desires for individual characters, often in opposition to each other. For David Edgar ‘[W]hat characters do is pursue objectives [but they] are not necessarily – or even often – pursued directly’.[3] Objectives alter according to the nature of changing conversation and character revelations, thus transforming its intensity, pace, and meaning. The motivation behind a line of dialogue informs what the character wants to achieve by them saying a particular thing. Edgar refers to Stanislavsky’s theory of ‘Actioning’, where actors place an intention behind each individual line. This is a rehearsal technique utilised by the director Max Stafford Clark:

Max Stafford Clark…and his actors ‘action’ individual lines with transitive verbs: in pursuit of the objectives, say, of seduction, a character may befriend, please, intrigue and flatter in as many lines, to which the other character, in pursuit of the objective of remaining unseduced, may respond by warning, snubbing, and challenging before finally spurning.[4]

This technique highlights obstacles to these intentions. Obstacles are defined as factors working against a character’s objective, often taking the form of another character in the scene, ensuring a more emotional undercurrent between characters to create conflict, particularly as

[A]nother important function of the dialogue is the expression of emotion. Characters don’t just state facts; they express their feelings toward conditions they feel strongly about. The most highly emotional dialogue is often a free release of feelings stemming from an open clash of wills.[5]

In order to evaluate how playwrights have deployed these conventions within their writing, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill and Under the Blue Sky by David Eldridge will be used as examples to explore how these dramatic practices create meaning. Top Gi