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12. DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEMPORARY DRAMA IN ENGLISH
After WW2 school are open for the working class childrenchance
to them to get a
university degree (=red brick university). Establishment means
here that everything was
different and everything was the same. Working classs interests
started to appear, opening a
new line of development= the Angry generation brings a fresh
Brice to British drama.
1.John Osborn: prominent representative of Angry Young Men= Look
Back in Anger= set= a
rented flat, attic room, main character: Jimmy Porter=> a
rebel; runs a sweet (candy) shop in a
market place with his friend Cliff. Jimmy is the representative
of the new class, no place in
the present society, no prospect for him, no possibility from a
rootless class. His anger is
directed at virtually anyone + self-pitty and sadism, too
indicates the conflict with the
establishment because there is the impossibility of getting a
position for the newly educated;
the new type of intellectual does not have traditions=>
consequence=> no place for them in
English society; The provincial problem enhances this Look back=
nostology for an earlier
world, Edwardian age question emerges: What extend can you blame
the society? The phenomenon of
Angry Young Men= indicates the revolution of the theatre because
of the topics/problems.
Realistic elements. Language is clear, simple. Setting=> a
depressing place; genre= neither
tragedy nor comedy.
2.Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party=> Jewish (Pinter)=
distinct style is pinteresque. Genre
is comedy, of pinteresque= claustrophobic, metaphysical= comedy
of menace= the pretence
of violence; setting= boarding house (the only place to go);
language= precise; violenttowards/with Stanley. The plot: Stanley
is a pianinst maybe we dont know ( it isnt
mentioned) lives in a boarding house and two unknown/strangers
visit him as his old friend
Landlady organizes a birthday party for him turns into a horror
for they want to take
Stanley somewhere for some reason; The party is chaotic, fearful
Blind eye game (play in
the play) party= nightmare stories are not provided, some
mysterious characters are in it;
The party is very violent for Stanley. Sometimes we can
formulate the ideas, but sometimes,
not. Beckett says we cant get answers to our questions. Minimal
actions, colloquial-like
dialogues, occasionally powerful rhetorical speeches
(especially: Goldbergs speeches).
Possible themes maybe: the individuals resistance, destruction
of an indioidual (escape to a
nostalgic past) Other Char.-s: Landlord (Pete) at the
beginning/end; Lulu; Landlady=Mag.
3.Tom Stoppard: Rozencrantz and Guildernstein are Dead= post
absurd (sur-absurd for
me)=> no plot? Reality is missing or there is the illusion of
reality; unity replaced by mystery,
ambiguity, chaos theory, a light touch towards the reader can be
felt, but not so strong, 3
people in the theatre group= 1 actor; Victorian age social
context= after the WW-s nobody
knows what is important. From Shakespeare Hamlet= R. and G. were
Hamlets classmates,
friends; plays within the play; they are minor characters=>
they are on a mission and are
attendant Lords= courtiers= used to be noblemen? Now servants.
Question: Can they live
with the chance they have got? They are at a loss; Hilarious
scenes: the actor after dyingstand up on the stage. Tragical: the
limitations of the char.-s, so simple ones= there is not
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possibility to be main char.-s from minor ones. Language: rather
randomly modern, but
stylised idiom invented for the occasion. The players are at the
end the main char.-s do
nothing to prevent own deaths , yet are aware what is going to
happen to them, do not make
any decision which could change their lives.
4.Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon,
who call each other Gogo
and Didi, meet near a bare tree on a country road. They wait for
the promised arrival of
Godot, whose name could refer to 'God' or also the French name
for Charlie Chaplin,
'Charlot'. To fill the boredom they try to recall their past,
tell jokes, eat, and speculate about
Godot. Pozzo, a bourgeois tyrant, and Lucky, his servant, appear
briefly. Pozzo about Lucky:
"He can't think without his hat." Godot sends word that he will
not come that day but will
surely come the next. In Act II Vladimir and and Estragon still
wait, and Godot sends a
promising message. The two men try to hang themselves and then
declare their intention of
leaving, but they have no energy to move. In Beckett's
philosophical show, there is no
meaning without being. The very existence of Vladimir and
Estragon is in doubt. WithoutGodot, their world do not have
purpose, but suicide is not the solution to their existential
dilemma.
American drama
1.Edward Albee: Whos afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the play,
George and Martha invite a
new professor and his wife to their house after a party. Martha
is the daughter of the president
of a university where George is an associate history professor.
Nick (who is never addressed
or introduced by name) is a biology professor who Martha thinks
teaches math, and Honey is
his mousy, brandy-abusing wife. Once at home, Martha and George
continue drinking and
engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical
abuse in front of Nick and
Honey are simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed. They stay
even though the abuse turns
periodically towards them as well. (The Zoo Story, The American
Dream)
2.Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire It is the story
of Blanche DuBois, a fragile
and neurotic woman.After being exiled from her hometown for
seducing a 17 year-old boy at
the school, she goes to her sisters home. Blanche explains her
unexpected appearance as
nervous exhaustion. Stanley and Stella are deeply in love.
Blanche's efforts to impose herself
between them only enrages the animal inside Stanley; as rumours
of Blanche's past in Auriolbegin to catch up to her, her
circumstances become unbearable. The two sisters could
represent two ways after the civil war. The post war crisis
broke the dreams of southern
people. Blanche married a plantation owner but failed. Stella
married a Pollack ( Stanley was
Polish) and she was happy and independent.
3. Arthur Miller: Death of a Saleman mixes the tradition of
social realism that informs most
of Miller's work with a more experimental structure that
includes fluid leaps in time as the
protagonist, Willy Loman, drifts into memories of his sons as
teenagers. Loman represents an
American archetype, a victim of his own delusions of grandeur
and obsession with success,
which haunt him with a sense of failure
