Realism 374i3v

Ioana Mohor-Ivan

Realism/Naturalism and the British Stage

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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 wellmade plays. 1. The nineteenth-century theatrical background 

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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: Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, Byron’s 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: Shakespeare’s 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, uppermiddle class audience of the established theatre. Originators: Eugène 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.

Ioana Mohor-Ivan

Realism/Naturalism and the British Stage

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2. The naturalist movement:

It opposed romantic situations and characterisation, aiming to put on stage only what could be verified by observing ordinary life. a) Zola: early theory

Émile 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 character’s individuality) b) Henrik Ibsen (1826 – 1906): the “father of modern drama”

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Ibsen 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. Ibsen’s naturalist plays:  The Pillars of Society (1877): moral story of Counsel Bernick, introducing the theme that lies rot and corrode their originators.  A Doll’s House (1879): story of Nora Helmer’s 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 of the Alvig family.

Ioana Mohor-Ivan

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An Enemy of the People (1882): challenges the Victorian belief according to which the community was a noble institution that could be trusted.

c) André Antoine, the Theatre Libre and a new production style

André Antoine (1858 – 1943) was a French actor-manager, who founded in 1887 the Théâtre Libre in Paris, in order to realize his ideas as to the proper development of dramatic art. His work had enormous influence on the French stage, as well as similar companies like the Independent Theatre Society in London and the Freie Buhne in . The Théâtre 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. d) Stanislavsky and a new acting style

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Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863 – 1938) was a Russian actor and theatre director, co-founder (with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko) 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 actor’s 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.

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o If actors are not merely to play themselves, they must analyze the script thoroughly and define their character’s 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 it’s happening for the "first time." o Actors must continually strive to perfect understanding and proficiency. e) Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904): the “theatre of mood”

Russian playwright and one of the great masters of modern short story, Chekhov combined in his work the disionate 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, as a part of everyday texture of life. His characters are ive by-standers 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 ing 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.

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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.

3. Realism in Britain: a) Domestic realism: Robertson’s “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), 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.

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b) The late 19th-century Victorian 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 Doll’s 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 society’s values. • Nevertheless, its resolution s the dominant code of the upper middle-class ethos. Henry Arthur Jones (1851 – 1934) and Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934) • 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. • Jones’s Mrs Dane's Defence (1900) is illustrative of the new trend:

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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. •

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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 best-known 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 step-daughter becomes engaged to one of her former seducers. In opposing the marriage, Paula is forced to confess the whole of her past history, and she commits suicide to save herself and those she loves from shame.

c) Championing Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

Shaw was born in Dublin. His father was an unsuccessful middle-class businessman; his mother was a good singer that eventually left her husband, and with her two daughters went to live in London as a

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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 ed the Zetetical Society, a discussion club whose 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 Marx’s “Das Capital” and ed 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 Norwegian’s example would bring a healthy change in the British literature. Shaw conducted a crusade ing 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 Ibsen’s drama that he had previously delivered at the meetings of the Fabian society. The tract is as much an advocacy of Ibsen’s genius as it is a manifesto for Shaw’s 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. Warren’s Profession (written 1893), which expounded the economic basis of modern prostitution, and The Philanderer (written 1893), it was considered too strong to 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 Shaw’s plays to be presented publicly. There followed, among others, Candida (1897), a re-writing of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, The Devil’s 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 Bull’s 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 lover in order ensure the instinctive regeneration of the race. Caesar and Cleopatra (1907), or Pygamlion (1910) maintained Shaw’s growing reputation for mischief and iconoclasm. In the 1920s, Shaw wrote some of his most serious

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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 Charles’s Golden Days (1939). In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Characteristics of the Shavian drama: •

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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 Ibsen’s 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 audience’s 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.

Ioana Mohor-Ivan

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d) Shavian Influences:

The links with Shaw’s 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 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. Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946) 

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Actor, director, playwright and scholar, Barker was responsible for Shaw’s 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)

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Novelist and playwright, Galsworthy remains best known as the author of The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) 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).

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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 Galsworthy’s drama: the workings of society (or, better said, the playwright’s 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 through an overt criticism of contemporary social issues, and is designed to have an immediate impact upon the public.

D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930) 

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Lawrence was the son of a miner in Nottinghamshire, whose mother, better educated than her husband and disappointed in marriage by her husband’s 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 . 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, Lawrence’s major works include Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920) and Lady Chatterley’s 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 Collier’s 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

Ioana Mohor-Ivan

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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.

Terence Rattigan (1911 – 1977) One of England’s most popular dramatists of the twentieth century, Rattigan alternated between comedies and dramas generally situated within an uppermiddle class background. 1936 French Without Tears 1939 After the Dance 1946 The Winslow Boy 1952 The Deep Blue Sea 1954 Separate Tables (comprising Table By the Window and Table No.7) 1960 Ross 1970 A Bequest to the Nation 

His plays update the Victorian ‘problem play’, by introducing serous themes and provocative moral issues which are, nevertheless, rendered obliquely, through suggestion.

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Post-War Developments 1956: the beginning of a new wave of “realist drama”, brought about by: A

changing national consciousness and the new vision expressing it; A changing relationship between the government and the arts (the Arts Council) Appearance of new theatres and dramatic companies (e.g. George Devine’s English Stage Company, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.) A particular rebellion against the middle-class fare of the London theatres. Kitchen-sink Drama Kitchen

sink realism was an English cultural movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays. It used a style of social realism to explore a range of social issues and political controversies; its stories often depicted the domestic squalor working class Britons living in council flats and spending their off-hours in grimy pubs. The films, plays, and novels using this style are often set in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and expressions used in those regions. As well, these works often dealt frankly with social and political themes ranging from homelessness to unwanted pregnancy, which made the style a break with the conventions of a typical West End play. E.g. Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey John Osborne (1929-1996) In

a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he ed but also against his own family. His Look Back in Anger (1956) is considered the landmark of the new wave of realist plays. It 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 The three-act play takes place in a squalid one-bedroom flat in the Midlands. Jimmy Porter, lower middle-class, 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

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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. Scene 1 JIMMY: I’m the only one who knows how to treat a paper, or anything else, in this house. (Picks up another paper.) Girl here wants to know whether her boyfriend will lose all respect for her if she gives him what he asks for. Stupid bitch. CLIFF: Just let me get at her, that’s all. JIMMY: Who buys this damned thing? (Throws it down.) Haven’t you read the other posh paper yet? CLIFF: Which? JIMMY: Well, there are only two posh papers on a Sunday - the one you’re reading, and this one. Come on, let me have that one, and you can take this. CLIFF: Oh, all right. (They exchange.) I was only reading the Bishop of Bromley. [. . .] JIMMY: What’s the Bishop of Bromley say? CLIFF: Oh, it says here that he makes a very moving appeal to all Christians to do all they can to assist in the manufacture of the H-bomb. JIMMY: Yes, well, that’s quite moving, I suppose. (To Alison.) Are you moved, my darling? ALISON: Well, naturally. JIMMY: There you are: even my wife is moved. I ought to send the Bishop a subscription. Let’s see. What else does he say. Dumdidumdidumdidum. Ah, yes. He’s upset because someone has suggested that he s the rich against the poor. HE says he denies the difference of class distinctions. “This idea has been persistently and wickedly fostered by - the working-classes!” Well! (He looks up at both of them for reaction, but Cliff is reading and Alison is intent on her ironing.) (To Cliff.) Did you read that bit? […] JIMMY: God, how I hate Sundays! It’s always so depressing, always the same. We never seem to get any further, do we? Always the same ritual. Reading the newspapers, drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours, and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away. Do you know that? CLIFF: (throws the paper.) What’s that? JIMMY: (casually.) Oh, nothing. Damn you, damn both of you, damn they all.

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CLIFF: Let’s go to the pictures. (To Alison.) What do you say, lovely? ALISON: I don’t think I’ll be able to go. Perhaps Jimmy would like to go. (To Jimmy.) Would you like to go? JIMMY: And have my enjoyment ruined by the Sunday night yobs in the front row? No, thank you. (Pause.) Did you read Priestley’s piece this week? Why on earth I ask, I don’t know. I know damned well you haven’t. Why do I spend nine pence on that damned paper every week? Nobody reads it except me. Nobody can be bothered. No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth. You two will drive me round the bend soon - I know it, as sure as I’m sitting here. I know you’re going to drive me mad. Oh, heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that’s all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! I’m alive! I’ve an idea. Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings, and that we’re actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say? Let’s pretend we’re human. (He looks from one to the other.) Oh, brother, it’s such a long time since I was with anyone who got enthusiastic about anything.

Arnold Wesker (1932-) Considered

one of the key figures in 20th Century drama, Wesker is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings. His plays have been translated into 17 languages, and performed worldwide. He was knighted in 2006. The Wesker Trilogy Chicken Soup With Barley (1958): 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 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:

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Realism/Naturalism and the British Stage

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Beatie: Do you think we really count? You don' wanna take any notice of what them ole papers say about the workers bein' all-important these days - that's all squit! 'Cos we aren't. Do you think when the really talented people in the country get to work they get to work for us? Hell if they do? Do you think they don't know we 'ont make the effort? The writers don't write thinkin' we can understand, nor the painters don't paint expectin' us to be interested - that they don't, nor don't the composers give out music thinkin' we can appreciate it. 'Blust,' they say, 'the masses is too stupid for us to come down to them. Blust,' they say, 'if they don't make no effort why should we bother?'' So you know who come along? The slop singers and the pop writers and the film makers and the women's magazines and the tabloid papers and the picture-strip love stories thaas who come along, and you don't hev to make no effort for them, it come easy… The whole stinkin' commercial world insults us and we don't care a damn. Well Ronnie's right - it's our own bloody fault. We want the third-rate we got it! Suddenly Beattie stops as if listening to herself. She pauses, turns with an exstatic smile on her face. D’you hear that? D’you hear it? Did you listen to me? I’m talking. Jenny, Frankie, Mother - I’m not quoting no more. Mrs Bryant (getting to sit at the table): Oh hell, I hed enough of her - let her talk a whole she’ll soon get fed up. The others her at the table and proceed to eat and murmur. Beatie: Listen to me someone. (As though a vision were revealed to her) God in heaven, Ronnie! It does work, it’s happening to me, I can fell it’s happened, I’m beginning, on my own two feet - I’m beginning . . . The murmur of the family sitting down to eat grows as Beatie’s last cry is heard. Whatever she will do they will continue to live as before. As Beatie stands alone, articulate at last, the curtain falls.

I’m Talking About Jerusalem (1960): Ada Kahn marries Dave Simmonds. They move to an isolated house in Norfolk where they struggle through a backto-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.