Dramatising Education in Comedians and Arcadia

Abstract

This paper analyses the dramatisation of education in two contemporary British plays: Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Both plays encompass different features of classrooms, pupils, teaching methodologies, types of tutors, however at the same time they dramatise the schooling process in England during different epochs. The first section of the paper deals with adults who attend a night school and aspire to be professional stand-up comedians. Griffiths’s Comedians reflects the idea of how adult workers have to attend classes in order to enhance their employment opportunities in post-war Britain. The play also shows Mr Waters’s endeavour to teach his pupils the significance of stand-up comedy and its cathartic role in life. In Stoppard’s Arcadia, the dramatisation of education predominantly takes place in the Victorian ear. It becomes apparent that Septimus is a different kind of a tutor, as he has to teach and inform young Thomasina not just about different branches of science, but also about various aspects of life and experiences which Thomasina has to face and comprehend on her own. The paper emphasises the idea that real education exists everywhere, even outside the traditional classroom setting, and thereby children and adults, as well as teachers, always remain learners who obtain different pieces of knowledge and understanding.