Educating Rita

Educating Rita , program of the Landesbühne Lower Saxony North, 1981

Educating Rita by Willy Russell is an English language comedy in two acts set in Liverpool in the 1970s. The play premiered on June 10, 1980 with permission from the Royal Shakespeare Company at Donmar Warehouse in London and is based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw .

action

first act

Susan White , a married hairdresser aged 26, decides to pursue an exam despite her incomplete schooling. She also takes courses at the Open University , where she meets the disaffected and constantly drinking literature teacher Frank Bryant . Because of her open and self-confident manner, Susan, who calls herself Rita in the presence of Frank , quickly wins his sympathy and a relationship develops on a personal level.

In conversations with Frank, Rita criticizes the monotony and meaninglessness in the lives of people from the working class to which she belongs. She does not share her husband's desire to have children. Instead, she wants to expand her horizons through education and ultimately find herself.

In the course of her training, Rita began to be enthusiastic about plays and poetry , and distanced herself further and further from her friends and relatives. Her husband finally leaves her because she refuses to give in to his desire to have children and she wants to continue taking courses at the Open University. Rita describes herself as an outsider or "half-breed" because, although she no longer feels comfortable in her old environment, she does not belong to the "upper class" due to her lack of general knowledge and her worker " slang ".

Second act

With increasing education, Rita gains more and more self-confidence. She makes friends with students and takes part in their discussions about literature . Frank has the feeling that he is being neglected by Rita, who is now intellectually equal. He thinks Rita has given up her honest and direct manner in the course of her training. He now sees her on a par with the students he hated, who examine literature analytically and unemotionally.

After his girlfriend abandons him, Frank's drinking problem intensifies. After a dispute over Frank's self-written works, Frank and Rita break up. After the argument, Frank feels guilty. He calls Rita drunk at work. She comes back to Frank one more time to tell him he was a good teacher. She passed her final exam in the course of the second act with flying colors and at the end of the piece she is now in a position to be able to determine her future life for herself. It becomes clear, however, that Rita sees education as a state in which there is no qualitative gradation, but that everyone “educated” has qualitatively the same education. Because of this, she sees herself on a par with Frank. It remains to be seen whether the two will have a future together.

filming

Main article: Rita finally wants to know

Educating Rita was made into a film in 1983. The screenplay was written by Willy Russell himself and directed by Lewis Gilbert . The two main actors Julie Walters and Michael Caine were honored with the Golden Globe Award in 1984 for their acting performance .

German stage version

In the year of its premiere, the play was translated into German by Angela Kingsford Röhl under the title Education for Rita . The German-language premiere took place in July 1981 at the Landesbühne Niedersachsen Nord . The performance rights are held by Litag Theaterverlag .

Others

A very similar setting can be found in the novel "Die Vielgeliebte" by the Austrian writer Jörg Mauthe .

swell

Bernhard Reitz, epilogue , in: Educating Rita , Stuttgart 1997, pp. 119-131, ISBN 3-15-009040-7

literature

expenditure

Willy Russell: Educating Rita , Reclam-TB 9040, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 978-3-15-009040-4 (original English version)
Willy Russell: Educating Rita (with materials), Pearson Longman - ISBN 0-582-43445-9 (original English version)
Willy Russell: Educating Rita (with additional material; edited and annotated by Albert-Reiner Glaap), Diesterweg - ISBN 3-42504-099-5 (original English version)