Universitatea Dunarea de Jos din Galati Facultatea de Litere I.D.D.

Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Part One:
Realism and the Modern British Playwright

(An optional course in English literature for 3rd year students in English)

Course tutor: dr. Ioana Mohor-Ivan

Galati 2009

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Cuprins:
CHAPTER 1: ELEMENTS OF DRAMATIC DISCOURSE 1.1. Drama / Theatre 1.2. Genres of Drama 1.3. Elements of Drama CHAPTER 2: REALISM / NATURALISM AND THE BRITISH STAGE 7 7 7 8

2.1. The nineteenth-century theatrical background 9 2.2. The naturalist movement 9 2.2.1. Zola: early theory 10 2.2.2. Ibsen: the modern drama 10 2.2.3. Antoine: a new production style 10 2.2.4. Stanislavski: a new acting style 11 2.2.5. Chekhov: the theatre of mood 11 2.3. Realism in Britain 12 2.3.1. Domestic realism 12 th 13 2.3.2. The late 19 -century stage 2.3.3. Henry Arthur Jones 14 2.3.4. Arthur Wing Pinero 14 2.4. Championing Ibsen: G.B. Shaw 15 2.4.1. Characteristics of Shavian drama 16 2.5. Shavian Influences 16 2.5.1. Haley Granville Barker 17 2.5.2. John Galsworthy 17 2.5.3. D.H. Lawrence 18 2.6. Postwar Developments 18 2.6.1. John Osborne 19 2.6.2. Arnold Wesker 19 2.7. Task 20

MINIMAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Obiective:
Aprofundarea cunostiintelor teoretice si a terminologiei de specialitate privind interpretarea modelelor si structurilor dramatice; Studierea principalelor directii ale dramaturgiei britanice moderne; Rafinarea deprinderilor de analiz si evaluare a textelor dramatice i a elementelor de spectacol.

Tipuri si modalitati de activitate didactica:

prelegerea, conversaia euristic, explicaia, dezbaterea, studiul de caz, problematizarea, metode de lucru n grup, individual i frontal, metode de dezvoltare a gndirii critice, portofoliul, studiul bibliografiei.

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5 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

CHAPTER 1 ELEMENTS OF DRAMATIC DISCOURSE

1.1. Drama / Theatre
Drama: a play written in prose or verse that tells a story through dialogue and actions performed by actors impersonating the characters of the story. Dramatic illusion: the illusion of reality created by drama and accepted by the audience for the duration of the play. Theatre: a) the building in which a play is performed: arena stage: a stage surrounded on all sides by the audience; actors make exists and entrances through the aisles. thrust stage: a stage extending beyond the proscenium arch, usually surrounded on three sides by the audience. proscenium stage: a stage having an arched structure at the front from which a curtain often hangs. The arch frames the action onstage and separates the audience from the action.

b) drama as an art form, including the written text and the concrete performance.

1.2. Dramatic Genres:

TRAGEDY: serious drama in which a protagonist, traditionally of noble position, suffers a series of unhappy events culminating in a catastrophe such as death or spiritual breakdown. COMEDY: a type of drama intended to interest and amuse rather than to concern the audience deeply. Although characters experience various discomfitures, the audience feels confident that they will overcome their ill-fortune and find happiness in the end. TRAGICOMEDY: play that combines elements of tragedy and comedy. Tragedies also include a serious plot in which the expected tragic catastrophe is replaced by a happy ending.

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MELODRAMA: excessively to happy ending: rewarded and punished.

a suspenseful play filled with situations that appeal the audiences emotions. Justice triumphs in a the good characters (completely virtuous) are the bad characters (thoroughly villainous) are

1.3. Elements of drama:

PLOT: the events of a play or narrative. The sequence and relative importance a dramatist assigns to these events. CHARACTER: any person appearing in a drama or narrative. SETTING: the time and place in which the action occurs; the backdrop and set onstage that suggest to the audience the surrounding in which a plays action takes place. DIALOGUE: spoken interchange or conversation between two or more characters.

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Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage

CHAPTER 2 - REALISM/NATURALISM
AND THE BRITISH STAGE
Realism in the last half of the 19th-century began as an experiment to make theatre more useful to society. It was in conscious rebellion against the generally romantic forms of drama that characterized the 19TH century stage, namely closet dramas, historical costume plays (spectacle dramas), melodramas, and well-made plays.

2.1. The nineteenth-century theatrical background

Closet drama: a literary composition written in the form of a play (usually as a dramatic poem), but intended or suited only for reading in a closet (a private study). Under the influence of the German Sturm und Drang, the English Romantic poets wrote closet tragedies, in which they glorified figures of heroic proportions.Examples: Shelleys Prometheus Unbound, Byrons Manfred Historical costume drama: Grand opera-style productions of historical plays (mainly revivals of Shakespeare), which placed their main emphasis on strong emotional contrasts and spectacular effects.Some 19th-century playwrights like Sheridan Knowles and Thomas Talfourd attempted to write high tragedy in the manner of Shakespeare. Melodrama: A sensational drama of strong emotions and unequivocal moral sentiment that had grown in the 18th and 19th centuries to provide popular entertainment for the urban poor. Ancestors: Shakespeares Macbeth, Jacobean blood and thunder, the gothic novel. Melodrama simplified its antecedents for a mainly illiterate population who needed a clear morality-play opposition between good and evil, and stereotypical characters they could sympathise, hate, or laugh at. It influenced the style of performance (stock companies of actors repeating their stereotypes), the costumes and make-up indicating the social and moral condition of the characters, the scenery signalling a necessary quality of vice, peril, or security. The well-made play: An adaptation of melodrama for the literate, upper-middle class audience of the established theatre. Originators: Eugne Scribe and Victorien Sardou in mid-nineteenth-century Paris (hence the alternative name of Scribean melodrama.) They codified the structure of their plays as EXPOSITION DEVELOPMENT DISCOVERY CRISIS DENOUMENT. The well-made play relies for effect on the suspense generated by its logical, cleverly constructed plot, rather than on characterisation, psychological accuracy or social themes.

2.2. The naturalist movement

It opposed romantic situations and characterisation, aiming to put on stage only what could be verified by observing ordinary life. 9 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage

2.2.1. Zola: early theory

mile Zola (1840-1902): French novelist and critic, the founder of the Naturalist movement in literature. Zola redefined Naturalism as "Nature seen through a temperament." Among Zola's most important works is his famous Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893), which included such novels as L'ASSOMMOIR (1877), about the suffering of the Parisian working-class, NANA (1880), dealing with prostitution, and GERMINAL (1885), depicting the mining industry. In his theatre criticism he outlined the following: Theatre should be the honest soldier of truth, serving the inquiring mind by analysing and reporting on man and society. Characters: ordinary people in their natural setting; Stage scenery: vivid background and environment; Setting, costumes, dialogue: life-like (appropriate to the given situation and the characters individuality)

2.2.2. Ibsen: the modern drama

Henrik Ibsen (1826 1906) is held to be the greatest of Norwegian authors and one of the most important playwrights of all time, considered largely responsible for the rise of modern realistic drama (the "father of modern drama.) Victorian-era plays were expected to be moral dramas with noble protagonists pitted against darker forces; every drama was expected to result in a morally appropriate conclusion, meaning that goodness was to bring happiness, and immorality pain. Ibsen challenged this notion and the beliefs of his times and shattered the illusions of his audiences by introducing a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. Ibsens naturalist plays: The Pillars of Society (1877): moral story of Counsel Bernick, introducing the theme that lies rot and corrode their originators. A Dolls House (1879): story of Nora Helmers emancipation from the patriarchal mores of her society Ghosts (1881): a scathing commentary on Victorian morality, in which a husband's philandering has tragic outcomes on the members of the Alvig family. An Enemy of the People (1882): challenges the Victorian belief according to which the community was a noble institution that could be trusted.

2.2.3. Antoine: a new production style

Andr Antoine (1858 1943) was a French actor-manager, who founded in 1887 the Thtre Libre in Paris, in order to realize his ideas as to the proper development of dramatic art. His work had enormous 10 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage influence on the French stage, as well as similar companies like the Independent Theatre Society in London and the Freie Buhne in Germany. The Thtre Libre focused on a more naturalist style of acting and staging, performing works by Zola and other naturalist writers and plays by contemporary German, Scandinavian, and Russian naturalists. The productions employed: realistic costuming and acting, unobtrusive stage-movement, realistic furnishings and props, convincing sound and lightning effects.

2.2.4. Stanislavsky: a new acting style

Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863 1938) was a Russian actor and theatre director, co-founder (with Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko) of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) in1897. The MAT was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. It also differed from the other independent theaters since it emphasized theatrical production instead of just neglected plays. Stanislavski's innovative contribution to modern European and American drama is realistic acting. Building on the ensemble playing and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement, Stanislavski organized his realistic techniques into a coherent and usable 'system, which was as important to the development of socialist realism in the USSR as it was to that of 'psychological realism' in the United States (the American 'Method.) He developed the so-called psycho-technique that requests the following: o The actors body and voice should be trained thoroughly to respond to every demand. o Actors should be skilled observers of reality in order to build a role. o Actors should use inner justification for everything done on stage. o If actors are not merely to play themselves, they must analyze the script thoroughly and define their characters motivations in each scene. They must discover their characters "objective." o On stage, actors must experience the action as it unfolds moment to moment as if its happening for the "first time." o Actors must continually strive to perfect understanding and proficiency.

2.2.5. Chekhov: the theatre of mood

Russian playwright and one of the great masters of modern short story, Anton Chekhov (1860 1904) combined in his work the dispassionate attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity and psychological understanding of an artist. Chekhov portrayed often life in the Russian small towns, where tragic events occur in a minor key, 11 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage as a part of everyday texture of life. His characters are passive bystanders in regard to their lives, filled with the feeling of hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts. Plays: o The Seagull (1894): centres on the romantic and artistic conflicts between four theatrical characters: the ingenue Nina, the fading leading lady Irina Arkadina, her son, the experimental playwright Konstantin Treplyov, and a famous middle-aged story-writer Trigorin. o Uncle Vanya (1900): a melancholic story of Sonia, her father Serebryakov and his brother-in-law Ivan (Uncle Vanya), who see their dreams and hopes passing in drudgery for others. o Three Sisters (1901): a naturalistic play about the decay of the privileged class in Russia and the search for meaning in the modern world. It describes the lives and aspirations of the Prozorov family, the three sisters (Olga, Masha, and Irina) and their brother Andrei. o The Cherry Orchard (1904): concerns an aristocratic Russian family as they return to the family's estate just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. The story presents themes of cultural futility both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism. The theatre of mood: o It fragments the well-made play, scattering exposition throughout, excising action. o Lack of focus on a leading character (employs a larger cast of highly individualised characters meant as a microcosm of society) o Subtext: the surface of the dialogue seems innocuous or meandering, but implies deep meanings, which forces the spectator to constantly probe, analyse, ask what is implied by what is being said.

2.3. Realism in Britain 2.3.1. Domestic realism: Robertsons cup-and-saucer drama

The trend towards a home-grown realistic drama began in England in the 1860s, with the plays of T. W. Robertson (1829 1871). The son of a provincial actor and manager, Tom Robertson belonged to a family famous for producing actors. Though he never managed to become a successful actor himself, he wrote a number of plays, mostly comedies, which achieved popularity: o Ours (1866), o Caste (1867), 12 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage o Play (1868), o School (1869), o M.P. (1870), o War (1871). These plays (known as cup-and-saucer drama) were notable for treating contemporary British subjects in settings that were realistic, unlike the Victorian melodramas that were popular at the time. For example, whereas previously a designer would put as many chairs into a dining room scene as there were actors who needed to sit down, Robertson would place on stage as many chairs as would realistically be found in that dining room, even if some were never actually used. In Ours, a pudding was made on stage and this caused a major furor people were not used to seeing such realistic tasks in a stage setting. Also, the characters spoke in normal language and dealt with ordinary situations rather than declaiming their lines. In addition, the importance of everyday incidents, the revealing of character through apparent "small talk", and the idea that what is not said in the dialogue is as important as what is said are all Robertson trademarks.

2.3.2. The late 19th-century stage

Characteristics: Theatre had become a fashionable and respectable institution. Main audience: upper-middle class. The commercial stage: dominated by actor-managers. It aimed at projecting an idealised vision of upper-middle class decorum, suavity, respectability Society drama: A type of play whose subject-matter was socially restricted to the lives of the upper middle-class. It demonstrated and endorsed a non-objectionable subject-matter and morality. As such, it was conservative in matters of social conduct and sexual morality. The Impact of Ibsen The staging of A Dolls House (1889) and Ghosts (1891) by the minority theatre outraged a great part of the public opinion. Clement Scott (drama critic for the Daily Telegraph): suburban; an open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly; a lazar house with all its doors and windows opened. Some playwright, nevertheless, started a process of assimilation, producing a compromise between the outspokenness of Ibsen and the conventional society drama. They developed a variant of society drama known as the problem play. The problem play: A play that aims to be searching, serious and sophisticated in its treatment of contemporary social issues, trying to offer a thoroughgoing examination of societys values. 13 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage Nevertheless, its resolution supports the dominant code of the upper middle-class ethos.

2.3.3. Henry Arthur Jones (1851 1934)

Jones successfully began his dramatic career writing Melodrama. Inspired by Ibsen, he moved into more serious drama. He is credited, along with Pinero, for the new movement in England toward Realism. Both writers were provocative enough for scandal, but acceptable to the censors and his public. Joness Mrs Dane's Defence (1900) is illustrative of the new trend: o The story focuses on Mrs. Dane's betrothal to Lionel, adopted son to Sir Daniel who is a famous judge. Rumors have been spread by a scandal-monger that the young widow Mrs. Dane is actually Felicia Hindermarsh, involved in a tragic scandal following an affair with a married man in Vienna. Before Sir Daniel gives his consent to the marriage of his son to her he wants to get at the truth of matters, ultimately to clear the rumors and reinstate Mrs. Dane's reputation. Mrs. Dane can produce plausible evidence of her identity and everyone involved is quite convinced of her innocence. Yet in the end Sir Daniel's professional approach leads to the unveiling of the real identity of Mrs. Dane in a famous cross-examination scene, in which a slip of the tongue by Mrs. Dane alerts Sir Daniel of an inconsistency in her story, and allows him to draw the confession out of her that she is indeed Felicia Hindermarsh. The truth is kept secret, though,and Mrs. Dane's reputation in Sunningwater can be reinstated. Nevertheless, they all decide she should leave the village after her marriage with Lionel has become impossible and she complies.

2.3.4. Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934)

Actor and a leading playwright of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras in England, Pinero made an important contribution toward creating a self-respecting theatre by helping to found, along with Jones, a social drama that drew a fashionable audience. His problem-plays helped create public acceptance for the significant changes and radical thinking of Ibsen. In 1893 the production of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, his bestknown work, raised protest because of its sympathetic portrayal of a woman with a questionable past, but its popularity changed producers attitudes towards this new Ibsenesque" drama. o The plot focuses on Paula Tanqueray, who has concealed part of her past from her respectable husband, Aubrey, but this unexpectedly catches up with her when her stepdaughter becomes engaged to one of her former seducers. In opposing the marriage, Paula is forced to confess the

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Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage whole of her past history, and she commits suicide to save herself and those she loves from shame.

2.4. Championing Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950)

Shaw was born in Dublin. His father was an unsuccessful middleclass businessman; his mother was a good singer that eventually left her husband, and with her two daughters went to live in London as a music teacher. In 1876 Shaw followed her to London, intent to earn his living by writing. His first publications were serial novels and criticism for a number of English periodicals. In 1879 he joined the Zetetical Society, a discussion club whose members had debates about economics, science and religion. It was here that he met Henry George, a socialist who sustained the importance of economics in society and the necessity of land nationalization. Shaw accepted his theories, read Karl Marxs Das Capital and joined the Fabian society, a group which preached the evolutionary socialism. He worked for this society editing books, writing pamphlets, and displaying his dialectical ability in many public discussions. Shaw befriended William Archer, a Scottish journalist and dramatic critic who introduced him to the work of Ibsen. Both decided to introduce Ibsen into England, in the hope that the Norwegians example would bring a healthy change in the British literature. Shaw conducted a crusade supporting the new kind of drama, where the dramatist was at once an ethical philosopher and a social reformer. He set the role of the dramatist in The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), a collection of lectures on Ibsens drama that he had previously delivered at the meetings of the Fabian society. The tract is as much an advocacy of Ibsens genius as it is a manifesto for Shaws future work as a playwright. In compliance with its ideas, Shaw launched in 1892 Widowers Houses, his first play which, although criticized for his theme (a vigorous attack on slum landlordism), launched him as a dramatist. Like Mrs. Warrens Profession (written 1893), which expounded the economic basis of modern prostitution, and The Philanderer (written 1893), it was considered too strong to pass the censor and confined to private performance. Arms and the Man (1894) which wittily subverts the conventional view of heroism and male gallantry, was the first of Shaws plays to be presented publicly. There followed, among others, Candida (1897), a re-writing of Ibsens A Dolls House, The Devils Disciple (1897), a parody of melodrama, and The Man of Destiny (1897), a parody of Napoleon. Shaw owned his emergence into fame to the seasons organised by Harley Granville-Barker and J. E. Vedrenne at the Royal Court Theatre between 1904 and 1907. It was here that plays like John Bulls Other Island (1904), a provocative thrust at the Irish question, and Man and Superman (1905), in which he expounded his theory of the life-force the force that impels humanity to procreation, the supreme end of all the species, the main agent of which is the woman, who selects and pursues her 15 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage lover in order ensure the instinctive regeneration of the race. Caesar and Cleopatra (1907), or Pygamlion (1910) maintained Shaws growing reputation for mischief and iconoclasm. In the 1920s, Shaw wrote some of his most serious plays, Heartbreak House (1920), Back to Methuselah (1922) and Saint Joan (1923). Of his later plays, the best include Too Good to Be True (1932) and In Good King Charless Golden Days (1939). In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

2.4.1. Characteristics of the Shavian drama

Though his ideas were seldom original, since he generally borrowed them from economists and philosophers (like Marx or Nietzsche), Shaw was able to infuse into them the spirit of English comedy, creating a sort of drama that could be committed and comic at the same time. Although initially influenced by Ibsens anti-romantic theatre, his plays were also the product of two precise lines of interest and experience: Years and years of public speaking, which provide him with a deep knowledge of the audiences expectations, with the plays aiming to subvert them; His musical education and his love for opera, which led him to create roles for actors with a particular attention to voice contrast, like an opera without music. The result of these ingredients was a new type of play, whose features may be summarized as follows: o Their purpose is not so much to make people laugh, but to make them realize the absurdity of certain prejudices and reconsider their ideas and attitudes o Since debate is one of their main features, his plays are also called discussion plays o The plot is always static, but enlivened by mental actions, with the vigorous and brilliant dialogues providing them. o Problems are also faced by different points of view, through the so-called dialectic of confrontation. o The situations and characters, although not always lifelike and somewhat lacking in psychological analysis, are often used to embody an idea or a point of view that the play wants to illustrate hence the name of thesis drama, or drama of ideas.

2.5. Shavian Influences

The links with Shaws drama of ideas is most obvious in the work of contemporaries like Harley Granville-Barker and John Galsworthy, but it also serves as a reference point for the plays written by John Osborne in the second half of the twentieth-century. The political cast of his theatre, seen as having a direct social function, may be seen to 16 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage reverberate in the realistic emphasis of kitchen-sink playwrights like D.H. Lawrence or Arnold Wesker, intent on reforming society by depicting its evils in naturalistic detail.

2.5.1. Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946)

Actor, director, playwright and scholar, Barker was responsible for Shaws breakthrough to public acceptance as the initiator and main driving force of the Court Theatre Venture. As a playwright, Barker shows a Shavian commitment to intelligent debate. Nevertheless, his characters habitually act on the basis of unconscious instincts, which by definition cannot be verbalised. Hence a subtler form of realism evolved in his plays, which are characterised by an almost introvert tone and place their emphasis on the psychological aspects of generic problems. Their endings are characteristically left open with unfinished conversations, while the thesis (or message) that they aim to illustrate is left for the spectators to define. Plays: -The Marrying of Anne Leete(1900) -The Voysey Inheritance(1905) -Waste(1907) -The Madras House(1909)

2.5.2. John Galsworthy (1867-1933)

Novelist and playwright, Galsworthy remains best known as the author of The Forsyte Saga (19061921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. His first play, The Silver Box (1906) was specifically written to be performed at the Court Theatre, became an immediate success. He followed it with a series of plays including Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Eldest Son (1912), The Fugitive (1913), The Skin Game (1920), Loyalties (1922) and Exiled (1929). His principles as a playwright are outlined in the prefaces to the collected editions of his plays. Here he considers that the aim of the dramatist is to display impartiality and objectivity by setting before the public the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not distorted by his own outlook, so that the audience can draw the moral by themselves. Moreover, each play should be informed by a controlling idea the cohesive ideology of the playwright himself. It is this idea that becomes the ordering principle in Galsworthys drama: the workings of society (or, better said, the playwrights understanding of how society works) characteristically order the action of the plays and determines their plotting strategies. Because Galsworthy is a moralist, his plays continually attack social injustice and the double standards of class and gender. As such, his drama becomes clearly didactic, working for reform 17 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage through an overt criticism of contemporary social issues, and is designed to have an immediate impact upon the public.

2.5.3. D. H. Lawrence (1885 1930)

Lawrence was the son of a miner in Nottinghamshire, whose mother, better educated than her husband and disappointed in marriage by her husbands coarse and drunken behaviour, made every effort to raise the cultural level of her children to lift them out of the working class. Encouraged by his mother, Lawrence entered Nottingham University to be trained as a teacher. He began his writing career while working as a teacher. In 1912, he fell in love with Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of a professor at the university and they eloped to Germany. Their intense relationship formed the underlying theme of many of his novels. He died of tuberculosis in 1930 when he was only forty-four. Best known as a modernist novelist, Lawrences major works include Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920) and Lady Chatterleys Lover (1928). Their major theme is human relationships in the modern world where the natural harmony between men and men, men and women has been destroyed by industry and modern civilization. Lawrence developed this theme by exploring the emotional lives and sexual instincts of his characters and showing the great harm that modern industrial civilization has done to human nature, combining thus psychological analysis and social criticism. The same theme is present in his plays, the best known of which are A Colliers Friday Night (1909), The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1911) and The Daughter-in-law (1911), collectively known as The Nottinghamshire Trilogy. All three have a strong autobiographical basis, exploring the marriage of a strong and willed woman who thinks herself superior to her husband (as in his own family), while the increasingly destructive effect of educational or cultural pretensions defines the theme. They are working-class plays which document the wretchedness of working-class existence and the evil of middle-class values, providing a sharp contrast to the sanitized image of the worker characteristic of more traditional plays. Along with this comes an emphasis on the basic daily activities representative for the working-class, anticipating thus the kitchen-sink play (a play that portrays the lives of ordinary people) that came into fashion into the 1950s.

2.6. Post-war Developments

1956 witnessed the beginning of a new wave of realist drama, brought about by: a changing national consciousness and the new vision expressing it; 18 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage a changing relationship between the government and the arts (the Arts Council) appearance of new theatres and dramatic companies (e.g. George Devines English Stage Company, Joan Littlewoods Theatre Workshop.) a particular rebellion against the middle-class fare of the London theatres.

Many of the new plays were labeled as kitchen-sink drama, because their stories often depicted the domestic squalor of working-class families, being set in the poorer industrial areas of the North of England and using regional speaking accents and expressions.

2.6.1. John Osborne (1929 1996)

Osborne came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British plays remained blind to the complexities of the postwar period. Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. His Look Back in Anger spawned the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and other writers of his generation who employed harshness and realism, in contrast to what was seen as more escapist fare previously. Look Back in Anger (1956): The three-act play takes place in a squalid one-bedroom flat in the Midlands. Jimmy Porter, lower middleclass, university-educated, lives with his wife Alison, the daughter of a retired Colonel in the British Army in India. His friend Cliff Lewis, who helps Jimmy run a sweet stall, lives with them. Jimmy, intellectually restless and thwarted, reads the papers, argues and taunts his friends over their acceptance of the world around them. He rages to the point of violence, reserving much of his venom for Alison's friends and family. The situation is exacerbated by the arrival of Helena, an actress friend of Alison's from school. Appalled at what she finds, Helena calls Alison's father to take her away from the flat. He arrives while Jimmy is visiting the mother of a friend and takes Alison away. As soon as she has gone, Helena moves in with Jimmy. Alison returns to visit, having lost Jimmy's baby. Helena can no longer stand living with Jimmy and leaves. Finally Alison returns to Jimmy and his angry life.

2.6.2. Arnold Wesker (1932 - )

Weskers early naturalist plays are typical of the kitchen-sink realism. Chicken Soup With Barley (1958): it is the saga of a communist Jewish family, Sarah and Harry Kahn, and their children, Ada and Ronnie. Beginning with the anti-fascist demonstrations in 1936 in London's East End and ending with the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the play explores the disintegration of political ideology parallel with the disintegration of the family. Roots (1959): explores the theme of 'self-discovery'. Beatie Bryant, the daughter of Norfolk farm labourers, has fallen in love with Ronnie Kahn. She returns from London to visit her family all of whom await the arrival of Ronnie. During the two-week waiting period Beatie is full 19 Main Trends in Modern British Drama

Chapter 2 Realism, Naturalism and the British Stage of Ronnie's thoughts and words. To greet him the family gathers for a huge Saturday afternoon tea. He doesn't turn up. Instead comes a letter saying he doesn't think the relationship will work. The family turns on Beatie. In the process of defending herself she finds, to her delight, that she's using her own voice. Im Talking About Jerusalem (1960): Ada Kahn, marries Dave Simmonds. They move to an isolated house in Norfolk where they struggle through a back-to-the-land experiment. Dave makes furniture by hand. Friends and family visit them throughout their 12 rural years charting and commenting on the fortunes of their experiment. It doesn't work, but they end gratified to have had the courage to try.

Task:
Choose one of the following topics to develop into a 4000-word essay of the argumentative type: 1. Traditionalism vs modernism: A. W. Pineros The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 2. G. B. Shaw: Thesis drama and Technique in Man and Superman 3. Naturalist Premises in J. Galsworthys The Silver Box 4. The kitchen-sink play: D.H.Lawrences The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd 5. The kitchen-sink play: Arnold Weskers Roots. 6. John Osbornes Alienation: Look Back in Anger.

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Minimal Bibliography

MINIMAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Banu, G., M. Toniza, Arta teatrului, Ed. Nemira, 2004. Barba, E., O canoe de hrtie tratat de antropologie teatral, Unitext, 2003. Birch, D., The Language of Drama, Macmillan, 1991 Borie, M., Antonin Artaud. Teatrul i ntoarcerea la origini, Editura Polirom/Unitext, 2004. Brown, J.R., The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre, OUP, 1995. Caufman-Blumenfeld, O., Teatrul european-teatrul american: influente, Ed.

Universitatii Al.I. Cuza, Iasi, 1998. Chambers, C., Prior,M., Playwrights Progress. Patterns of Post-War British Drama, Amber Lane Press, London, 1997. Davies, A., Other Theatres: The Development of Alternative and Experimental Theatre in Britain, Macmillan Education Ltd, 1987. Elsom, J., Cold War Theatre, Routledge, 1992. Hodgson, T., Modern Drama from Ibsen to Fugard, B.T. Batsford, London, 1992. Innes, Christopher, Modern British Drama: 1890-1990, Cambridge UP, 1992. Styan, J.L., Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Vol. 3. Expressionism and Epic Theatre, Cambridge U.P., 1982. Styan, J.L., Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Vol.1. Realism and Naturalism, Cambridge U.P., 1991. Styan, J.L., Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Vol.2. Symbolism, Surrealism and the Absurd, Cambridge U.P., 1992. Ubersfeld, A., Termeni cheie ai analizei teatrului, Ed. Institutul European, 1999. Wardle, I., Theatre Criticism, Routledge, 1992

39 Main Trends in Modern British Drama