Anger Drama

1956 The revolution of the Anger Drama began in 1956, following the first performance of John Osbourne's play Look Back in Anger(Royal Court Theatre, London).

Look Back in Anger

The play was written in conventional form: -the plot is logical and continuos -the set is realistic Its novelty consists in the outspokeness (schiettezza) of its language, its open criticism of established values and its protagonist Jimmy Porter.

Jimmy Porter
Jimmy is an articulate (schietto) and thoughtful (pensoso) rebel and a working class hero: through his raw language he became the spokesman of a frustrated generation and the representative of the lower middle-class youth. Look back in Anger started a new trend in contemporary drama which grouped some playwrights (such as Arnold Wesker) under the label of Angry Young Man.

Main Features
realism working-class idiom political concern protest against society

1960's
During the 1960s the content of British plays became more and more iconoclastic and revolutionary. Young British dramatists protested against society and the way it was being changed. What's more, the abolition of Theatre Censorship (1967) gave playwrights more freedom: they could begin to question the traditional codes of sexual morality and the convention of the marriage, even allowed to mock and insult leading figures of the society of the time.