Post-1945 Drama

Question 1

Drama Characteristics After 1945

Answer 1

• Social realism
• Working-class characters and settings
• Prominent playwrights: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney
• Departure from drawing-room comedies and verse drama

Question 2

Theatre of the Absurd

Answer 2

• Emerged in the 1950s and 60s
• Influenced by Existentialism —> Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942
• Reaction against the “well-made play”
• Illogical or no plots
• Atmosphere of loss, bewilderment and purposelessness
• Characters trapped in bewildering world

Question 3

Plays

Answer 3

• Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Soprano
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Krapp’s Last Tape; Endgame
• Harold Pinter, The Room ; Birthday Party
• Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Question 4

Endgame Characters

Answer 4

• Hamm; unable to stand and blind
• Clov; Hamm’s servant; unable to sit
• Nagg; Hamm’s father; has no legs and lives in a dustbin
• Nell; Hamm’s mother; has no legs and lives in a dustbin next to Nagg

Question 5

Theatre of the Absurd/ Harold Pinter

Answer 5

• Pinter as postmodern dramatist
• Plays focus on the ways in which language conceals truth
• Lack of explanations for characters’ past or present motivations
• World seemingly of multiple surfaces and infinitely various actions, without definitive meanings or causes

Question 6

Osborne and the ‘New Wave’

Answer 6

• John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
• Often heralded as the beginning of working-class theatre
• Followed by ‘New Wave’ of social realist dramatists (e.g. Arnold Wesker, John Arden)
• Claims of new drama were sometimes radical BUT audiences remained middle- and upper classes
• Up to 1968, performances only possible under licence from Lord Chamberlain’s office; ideas deemed too radical (feminist, socialist) and forms considered too offensive were amended or banned altogether

Question 7

In-Yer-Face Theatre

Answer 7

• Reaction to ongoing middle-class bastion of entertainment in theatre • Shock audiences out of their complacency

• Anthony Neilson, *Normal *
• Philip Ridley, *The Pitchfork Disney *
• Mark Ravenhill, *Shopping and Fucking *
• Patrick Marber, *Closer *
• Sarah Kane:
- Blasted
- Phaedra‘s Love
- Cleansed
- Crave
- 4.48 Psychosis

Question 8

Crave

Answer 8

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