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3.1 The author - about W. Russell*/>
William Martin Russell was born as a son of a worker, who later buyed a fish-and-ship shop, in 1947 near Liverpool. He had an antipathy towards education and left school at the age of 15 with the idea of becoming a writer. First he began to work at a hairdressers. Then, after he discovered his faibl for bourgeosis theatre, he started learning how to become a teacher with the aim to write for the working class. After have worked some years as a teacher at St. Katharine's College of Education he decided to become a full-time writer.
3.2 The play - about Educating Rita*
Rita, a hairdresser out of the middle-class goes to the Open University to become a better-educated woman. Frank, her teacher, is an alcoholic, who tries to escape from the reality he won't or can't accept, by drowning his sorrows in alcohol. Rita is enthusiastic from the beginning; she wants to everything. Out of this commercial and superficial relationship grows a kind of friedship, because Rita begings to tell him everything about her privat life. After having visited the summerschool, Rita comes back as a totally changed person. Slowly rises a conflict between Frank and Rita. The main reason for this conflict is the self-confidence Rita reached; she wears a mask, which behind her orginality has lost, further she tries to influence him. They begin to depart from each other, because there is no longer dependence. In the end Frank takes a two-year taking sabbatical in Australia. Rita realizes, that she has gone wrong and thanks him for what he has teached her.
She lies down her mask and with a view on reality she has many choices in this open-end.
*:based on
-Kindlers Literaturlexikon; Hrsg. Walter Jens 1990
-Lektürehilfen Pygmalion/Educating Rita; Detlef
and Margret Ziegesar
-Educating Rita; W. Russell
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