S7 Post-1945 and Contemporary Drama

Question 1

Drama 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 à 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

Examples of Theatre of the Absurd

Answer 3

• Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Soprano (1948)
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1956); Krapp’s Last Tape (1958); Endgame (1958)
• Harold Pinter, The Room (1957); Birthday Party (1958)
• Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962)

Question 4

Harold Pinter

Answer 4

• 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 5

Osborne and the ‘New Wave’

Answer 5

• John Osborne, Look Back in Anger (1956)
• 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 6

What is In-Yer-Face Theatre?

Answer 6

• Reaction to ongoing middle-class bastion of entertainment in theatre
• Shock audiences out of their complacency
  [a] drama that takes the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakesit until it gets the message. It is a theatre of sensation: it jolts bothactors and spectators out of conventional responses, touching nerves and provoking alarm. Often such drama employs shock tactics … the best in-yer-face theatre takes us on an emotional journey, getting under our skin.

These dramatists are stronger on character and situation than conflict, tension and structure, preferring to offer
vivid snapshots rather than concoct plots, maybe because plot implies some coherence in people’s lives. They relish
the oddball, the misfit, the bizarre; but they are troubled by the helplessness and unhappiness they see all around.
They are vastly entertaining yet they radiate moral concern. They are Mrs Thatcher’s disorientated children.

Question 7

In-Yer-Face Theatre examples

Answer 7

• Anthony Neilson, Normal (1991)
• Philip Ridley, The Pitchfork Disney (1991)
• Mark Ravenhill, Shopping and Fucking (1996)
• Patrick Marber, Closer (1997)
• Sarah Kane (1972-1999)
• Blasted (1995)
• Phaedra‘s Love (1996)
• Cleansed (1998)
• Crave (1998)
• 4.48 Psychosis (2000)