Educating Rita – Coursework Piece ‘Educating Rita’ is a play by Willy Russell. It follows two people and their ever changing relationship. It takes place in just one room at a redbrick university in “the North of England”. Frank is an English lecturer at the university. He takes on an Open University teaching course “to pay for the drink”. Rita is a mature student on the course. She is a 26 year-old working-class hairdresser who wants to learn “everything”. She wants “a better way of livin’ [her] life” and to “discover [herself]” by taking English because she hopes this will change her