British post-war drama

Kitchen Sink Drama (late 1950s - early 1960s)

It was associated with a literary movement Angry Young Men, a group of writers who were young, well educated but originally lower class. It was new phenomenon because before a working class person could not study at university. However, even though they became well educated, they could not reach a better social status owing to deeply rooted stratification. They express anger and frustration on the impossibility to improve their status. As a result, they attack bourgeois values which were incompatible with new reality of post-war Britain. Angry Young Men wrote domestic drama or kitchen sink drama because the scene was usually set in a kitchen, featuring a young couples having argument. The educated husband is frustrated because he is stuck in low class and targets his frustration at his wife.

JOHN OSBORNE’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) introduced a new type of hero who became known as ‘the angry young man’ = someone disillusioned with traditional English society. The main protagonist is educated but he cannot a good job. He finds a wife from upper class but their relationship is full of conflict because of his frustration.

ARNOLD WESKER was a political social activist. His first play The Kitchen (1957) uses kitchen setting as a metaphor for unfair hierarchical society. Chicken Soup with Barley, expresses the idea of improvement of young working class people who got decent education but they could not gain a better social position.

Theatre of the Absurd (late 1950s)

Absurd theatre was concerned with language as means of communication but here the language rather than being a means of successful communication becomes a barrier. Absurdist plays are experimental, very dark and pessimistic but they can be also quite funny. Characters are paralysed subjects, they are not even full beings, rather subjects unable to find order in chaos of surroundings them, nor order in their own minds. Absurd plays often employ the stream of consciousness and simply record flow of images in the minds of characters which is completely irrational, difficult to understand and point to the chaos of man's existence in the modern world. Stories are completely plotless, illogical, even the setting is unclear.

SAMUEL BECKETT was an Irish dramatist awarded Nobel Prize for literature. He was influenced by James Joyce who was his friend and is considered one of the last modernists.

Krapp's Last Tape is about an old man sitting in a closed room with a tape recorder, playing the tapes he made at earlier point in his life and reflecting on the thoughts and impressions he had had as a younger man and the difference in his thoughts and feelings now.

Waiting for Godot /godou/ of two acts is one of the most influential works in English written in the 20^th century. Vladimir and Estragon arrive at a roadside location in order to await the arrival of someone named Godot. They appear to be tramps, as their clothes are ragged but they can also be refugees or soldiers from WW2. Audience never learns who Godot is or why he is important. The title can mean either a godillot (a military boot) or God (waiting for some kind of saviour). Estragon does not remember anything (element of existentialism) and tries to create new identity through Vladimir. Slave Lucky – some critics think he is really lucky because he leads the master in the end and is lucky since he is the only person with something to do. What is absurd about Godot? It a play about nothing, language is meaningless, no real beginning or ending, dialogue are rather shouting into darkness, no feedback shows absurdity of dialogues.

The play opens with Estragon struggling to remove a boot. Estragon eventually gives up, muttering, His friend Vladimir takes up the thought and muses on it. When Estragon finally succeeds in removing his boot, he looks and feels inside but finds nothing. Vladimir peers into his hat. The motif recurs throughout the play. Presently, Vladimir expresses his frustration with Estragon's limited conversational skills. Estragon struggles with this throughout the play, and Vladimir generally takes the lead in dialogue. They want to depart but is told that they cannot because they must wait for Godot. The pair cannot agree, however, on whether or not they are in the right place or that this is the arranged day for their meeting with Godot; they are not even sure what day it is. Their waiting is interrupted by the passing through of Pozzo and his slave Lucky. Vladimir takes Pozzo to task regarding his mistreatment of his slave, but his protestations are ignored. They begin to see that they are basically living the same day over and over. They resolve to bring a more suitable piece and hang themselves the next day, if Godot fails to arrive. Again, they agree to leave but neither of them makes any move to go.

HAROLD PINTER was also awarded with Nobel Prize and made a radio production of Vaclav Havel’s plays like Audience. His central theme is impossibility of communication between characters in a closed situation. As in Beckett’s work, it is not only the words that are said that are important - the silences and the words which are not said are also important. Pinter said that there are two sorts of silence – one where no word is spoken and the other where a flood of language is being used. He created a special kind of comedy of menace = a drama on the play of dominance and submission hidden in a dialogue. He was of Jewish origin and Nazi terror is reflected in his plays.

The Birthday Party is about closed, comfortable situation of a small lodging-house where two mysterious strangers come to ‘collect’ one of the people living there on his birthday without their reasons fully explained. Compared to Beckett who can be funny, Pinter has atmosphere of terror, oppression and danger.

The Caretaker is a story of a guy who applies for a caretaker and needs recommendations from the previous employer. He claims to have the papers but needs shoes to get them. New employer providec him with various shoes but complains about every pair. It is obvious he simply does not want to go, there is no recommendation.

TOM STOPPARD is of Czechoslovakia origin, born in Zlín, but he emigrated before Nazi terror. He is another writer for whom the use of language is of enormous importance in the relationship between appearance and reality. He uses play of words to express ideas about life and death, right and wrong, and the nature of man and the world. Stoppardian is the term describing works using with and comedy while addressing serious issues.

The Real Inspector Hound makes fun of conventions of theatre. There is police investigation on the stage and in the middle lies a body of the dead man but nobody seems to notice to presence of the dead body for some reason.

Rock 'n' Roll (2006) is not absurdist, it deals with the importance of music and underground culture in the political life of Prague Spring up to Velvet Revolution.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is about misadventures of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play focuses on their actions while the events of Hamlet occur as background. The two men play games to pass the time and wonder what will happen next and what their fate will be which we in the audience know already from Hamlet. They think they are important but they are not.

Travesties uses The Importance of Being Earnest as its starting point since some of the characters are the same. An old actor Carr narrates the events that happened in Zurich during the between the wars when he met those important figures. It is distorted because his really old and forgetful. Carr meets a founder of Dadaism Tzara and has disputes with him over art because for Tzara art can be anything. Carr fought in WW1 so he feels offended that Tzara does not appreciate patriotism. Carr claimed that wars are fought for the artists to express freedom and the victory of good is showed by ungrateful artists who are free to be ungrateful and egocentric. James Joyce at the same time is also in Zurich, working on his Ulysses. A young woman Gwendoline helps him and they always talk in rhymes together. She is basically the same character ad Gwendoline from The Importance of Being Ernest. Joyce offers Carr a role but Carr becomes interested after Joyce persuades him that his character is a stylish, adventurous dandy man. Tzara meets Joyce but accuses him of turning literature into dead religion. Carr is also mad because while he was fighting in war for freedom, Joyce was only writing something.

Another person in Zurich is Vladimir Lenin who was forced to exile with his wife Nadezdga Krupská. He is working on his book about imperialism and a young woman Cecile is his devoted student. Once the two woman mistakenly exchange folders with their works and men are surprised to read something entirely different. Lenin does not like modern literature, he wants all literature to be under communist rule to free it from bourgeoisie anarchist individualism. Tzara is in love with Gwendoline but does not want her to find out she is that famous Dadaist poet so he introduces as Jack, a brother of Tristan. Carr also visits a library a falls in love with Cecily. For her not to find out that he is not a socialist, he claims to be Tzara. When Gwendoline and Cecily meet, they find out about the feud but they still love them.

  

Other types of theatre

Theatre Workshop was a group noted for its female director JOAN LITTLEWOOD. Audience should actively participate in the play and plays should be for ordinary people: they were made by and for working class and there was no distinction between audience and actors.

Fringe theatre is used for alternative theatre of various festivals where one person shows are common. JOHN ARDEN was influenced by O’Casey and uses songs in his plays. He was a Marxist playwright and his Comedians is about the position of artists in capitalist system.

In-Yer-Face theatre is a form of drama that sprang up in the 1990s, created by young playwrights. It intends to involve and affect the audience by presenting vulgar, shocking and confrontational material on the stage.

SARAH KANE was extremely controversial, her plays deal with themes of love, sexual desire, cruelty, pain, torture (both psychological and physical) and death. She suffered of mental illness which she described in her last play 4.48 Psychosis. After that she committed suicide.