Download Second semester Drama (2) Fourth Year The play Our Town by

Dr. Shahaal
Second semester
Drama (2)
Fourth Year
The play Our Town by Thornton Wilder is like a hymn (religious song) of
the human experience.
Post WWII drama: some dramatist of the 1930’s continued to produce
similar works during the 1940’s and 1950’s. However, the theatrical
landscape in Europe and the U.S. changed significantly after WWII ; this
was a result of the emergence of so many political movements, or
philosophical movements.
Among the most influential post WWII movements was The Theatre of the
Absurd, or the so called Existential Theatre. The Absurd started as a
philosophy on the hands of Albert Camus, and the existentialist Jean Paul
Sartre. The Absurd is a philosophy centered upon the analysis of existence of
humanity, and stressing the freedom of Man and the isolation of the
individual; is Man responsible for everything he does or he is not. After
WWII, Man felt isolated, living in a world of alienation and isolation. In the
years following WWII, the philosophy of Existentialism gained many
followers in France and elsewhere.
Existentialism argues that the universe contains no fixed set of moral codes
)‫(ال تحكمه قيم أخالقية ثابتة‬, and each individual must create his own order and
morality. Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were the two leading
philosophers of this movement; Existentialism and later on Absurdism. They
wrote realistic drama of contemporary moral conflict )‫(صراع أخالقي و قيمي‬,
such as the play Men Without Shadows (1949) by Sartre.
Both Sartre and Camus believed that this universe of ours is controlled by a
sense of irrationality; no order or reason. They created dramas which
followed the traditional rules of rational construction and action of the play;
however, the theme of the play was irrational.
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Around 1950, a new group of playwrights, much philosophically influenced
by Camus and Sartre, created a revolution in European drama by taking the
irrational for the existentialist into the structure and motivations of their
plays; the thinking and the language of the characters were also irrational.
How can the language be irrational? By not expressing any logical theme
or consequence. According to them, the mind of the universe in this time is
governed by some kind of irrational thinking. Thus, the language of their
plays does not make any sense of communication. But this
miscommunication, in the talking between people, does not really imply or
express a kind of communication or revealing any kind of feeling; doesn’t
lead to any results or fruitful consequences. The characters are talking, but
their talking does not communicate any sense of logic, reason, or feelings.
Although different in style, these dramatists share a rejection. The dramatists
of that era, after 1940’s and 1950’s, rejected the traditional realistic drama.
They introduced reality in their plays, but not the traditional realistic drama,
a different kind of drama. This group came to be known as the Absurdist
group; the term comes from a 1942 essay by Albert Camus, which called the
human condition absurd. This is because humans continued to seek order,
logic and reason in a universe that was not built on these principles;
according to them, the universe is built on irrationality and disturbance. The
most known and the most successful play of the Absurdist movement is
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
The plays you will be studying are: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett,
Look back in Anger by John Osborne, and A Son, Come Home by Ed Bullins.
In England, the Absurd theatre had a limited impact compared to the greater
impact it had in Europe. However, similar playwrights were influenced by
this kind of writing and adopted its approaches and principles; that the
universe is controlled by irrational thinking. The international success of the
Absurdist dramatists drew attention to dramatists who had taken part in
earlier irrational movements. We had different non rational movements with
writers that were very angry at the situation of the universe after WWI and
WWII, which was a situation of disturbance, incompleteness, insecurity and
irrational thinking. Therefore, British stage, after WWII, was reinvigorated
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by a new realism more concerned with social commentary, and depicting the
lives of the lower classes (like the plays of Shaw which depicted the lives of
the lower classes).
Here, we have writers of this movement who were called the Angry Young
Playwrights; they were angry at the political and social situation they were
living after WWII. The name they got from the disillusioned protagonist of
the first success in the new style Look Back in Anger (1956). The
disillusionment indicates psychological and social disturbances. The
protagonist in the play is a man of the lower classes who worked hard and
studied hard and struggled in order to arrive at something. He finished his
university degree and was trying to find a job but he could not; like the
protagonist of the novel Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Thus the hero
becomes angry at the other classes and at life.
In America, the first half of the 20th century was dominated by the plays of
Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder. As for the second half of the 20th
century, Anderson and Wilder continued to produce important works
following WWII. But for the most praised older dramatist was O’Neil as we
said.
The dominant dramatists of the postwar years were Tennessee Williams and
Arthur Miller. Both of them pursued the Ibsenian tradition of social drama in
their most plays. E.g. Arthur Miller in his Death of a Salesman, he follows
the tradition of Henrik Ibsen; he uses some touches of expression that
appeared in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as symbolism, like
Ibsen’s The Master Builder, by conveying parts of the story through the main
characters memories.
William also worked in the more general art of realism, addressing
individual psychology more than social concerns. The reason for that was his
perversion and deranged mind. His most famous plays were The Glass
Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. He was an even more influential
American playwright than Arthur Miller.
The term style, when it comes to drama, refers to the way in which a play is
written, produced and acted. Dramatists should use the style of language that
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suits their ideas. Some productions are highly stylized. But in order to
convey a particular interpretation, the writer, the director, and the producer
blend costume, sceneries and lightning to create a special effect that is more
abstract than realistic on the audience.
The were eight styles that dominated the era. These styles were used, not
only in plays and dramas, but they were used in novels:
1- Romanticism in the 19th century: started with the Lyrical Ballads by
Coleridge and Wordsworth in (1798), ten years after the French Revolution.
They became very popular in the first part of the 19 th century. Romanticism
was a reaction against the strict rules of Classicism, with plays in which love
was the primary theme. The plays and productions of Romanticism were
highly imaginative; they presented an ideal, sometimes magical, world. like
the plays of Shakespeare in which, Rosalind in The Tempest, for example is
ideal, looking for the perfect love trying to educate her lover Orlando in the
way that she thinks is ideal.
2- Realism came as a reaction against Romanticism. This dominant style of the
20th century takes an opposite approach. Realism in plays present life as it
actually is; no imagination or fantasy, life the way it is. The characters talk
and act as people in ordinary life do. The outcome of the play makes sense in
the real world. The setting and scenery also contributed to the real life
atmosphere. The best realistic playwright of that era was the Norwegian
Henrik Ibsen, the father of Realism and modern playwriting. He introduced
Realism in his plays, such as A Doll’s House, The Master Builder, ..etc.
However, the playwright who introduced Realism into England and
dominated the century was George Bernard Shaw.
3- Naturalism was a kind of Realism; it grew out of Realism and out of the
idea that human beings have little self determination. Naturalism believes
that Man is controlled by three main aspects: nature, society and heredity
(inherited genes from ancestors). So, Naturalism, in response to forces of
nature and society that are beyond their control. Some example of Naturalists
is Emile Zola in France, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and
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Frank Norris in the U.S. Dreiser wrote a very important novel called Sister
Carrie, and Zola wrote Nana.
4- Symbolism, in contemporary theatre, is likely to mean the use of one
element, like a character, an object, or a piece of scenery to represent
something else. E.g. Ibsen’s Wild Duck, The Master Builder or Synge’s
Riders to the Sea. In Ibsen’s The Master Builder, ascending to the tower with
dizzy heights is a symbol of the Master Builder’s unconsciousness; the play
itself is symbolic.
5- Expressionism: the characters’ set of expressions tend to be distorted or
over simplified, or characters become symbolic rather than realistic. The
message of Expressionism is similar to that of Naturalism; it is often about
the uselessness of human hopes and dreams in this universe. It is always in a
negative and unhappy sense. According to Expressionism, whether you think
or not, this world is a world of uselessness and is meaningless; dreams are
not to be fulfilled because this world is governed and controlled by
mechanistic forces that destroy Man and crush the individual. Here Man
appears as having no will or freedom of will at all. One American example is
the playwright Eugene O’Neil and his play The Hairy Ape
6- Epic theatre: first developed by Bertolt Brecht. In Epic Theatre characters
are extended to become epic characters. Epic Theatre represents events in an
episodic form; the individual or the hero passes into different events or
episodes and how the character is capable of defeating them. The Epic
Theatre is a reaction against emotionalism (Romanticism where Man
becomes involved in his own emotions and gets lost in the world, like John
Keats in his “Ode to Melancholy”) and naturalism (a world of pessimism
and determinism where Man has no free will at all). But for Brecht, he
believed that Man has free will and can do something that is useful. Brecht’s
plays do not involve the spectators.
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Theatre of the Absurd
 The life and the action in an Absurd play is repetitive; the movement of the
individual is meaningless and repetitive. Time becomes timelessness. The
individual here feels that he is isolated in his own world. The only reality is
his own individuality, and the only certainty is his own freedom. But, what
kind of freedom? Being alienated from his own environment, the person’s
action seems useless in a world that is absurd.
 The absurdity arises in the sense of incongruity; there is no harmony at all
between his intentions or aspirations and the nature of his environment
)‫ (طموحاته ال يمكن تحقيقها في هذا المجتمع‬because such society crushes the
individual and his aspirations. Comedy here arises within a context of
despair; the person becomes very desperate, and from his despair comes
what is comic )‫(شر البلية ما يضحك‬. The situation is so damn harsh, bitter and
panicking, but it makes you laugh; because things are persistent and
repetitive, happening every day. The comic element reinforces the focus of
the play, which gives us a picture of Man facing the void. The world
becomes a world of no moral value, a world of void.
 Other Absurd Theatre plays have the following elements in the theme of
the play:
- Man is isolated and alienated.
- The world is cruel
- Nonsense, funfairing, triviality of Man’s struggle and actions
- Triviality of conventional objects
- Strong fantasy but all in void.
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Waiting for Godot
The characters, only five:
 The two main characters are: Estragon and Vladimir. The other three
characters are insignificant
 Estragon and Vladimir think of life as an exile )‫(حياة النفي و الوحدة‬, as if
this exile is a punishment for being born. Estragon suggests an exile in
time from the reality of their selves, which is a must be timeless; he
moves in time, but this time is timeless.
The time of the play is a timeless time because the time of yesterday is like
the time of today, and it is so similar to the time of tomorrow. Therefore,
time becomes repetitive and timeless: ‫(عندما يصبح الزمان ليس الزمان و المكان ليس‬
)‫ تصبح الحياة عقيمة جرداء‬..‫بالمكان و ال اإلنسان باإلنسان‬.
The characters in the play think of themselves as spatial and dimensionless;
exists horizontally. When you live horizontally, you move, but your
movement has no meaning or result. But when you stand vertically, your feet
touch the ground, standing in perpendicular way with you as a body that has
its own form, and you start thinking of yourself in this void.
The final turn in a series should determine a sense of order, but in Waiting
for Godot, they are waiting and they keep on waiting, and they wait, and they
move. But they move like from one room into another room. Thus, life
becomes very repetitive moving in a state of void. Time here becomes
timelessness, and their movement becomes useless.
So, you need someone to deliver )‫ (يخلصك‬you from this. The two characters
Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot. Godot is a symbol of the
deliverer or the savior who never comes. Beckett’s preoccupation is to show
that the movement and thoughts of the human being, in space and time, are
unrelated to the reality of the universe. The essence of reality is finite or
infinite. From the point of view of the Existentialist or the Absurdist, no one
has came to tell what happened to them after they died. So, reality here is
infinite )‫ (ال متناهية – ال حدود لها – ال معرفة لها‬because they believe that our human
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minds has no power to go beyond the finite to the infinite. The infinite is
unknown to us; God is infinite because we don’t know the reality of God.
 About Samuel Beckett (1906-1989):
o He was an author, a critic, a playwright, and also a winner for Nobel prize in
literature in 1966. He wrote in both French and English, and is best known
for his plays such as Waiting for Godot. He was born in the suburbs of
Dublin. From (1923 – 1927) he studied Romance languages and received a
B.A in Romance languages (French – Spanish – Italian); the most musical
Romance language is Italian.
o He returned to Ireland in 1930 to take up a post as lecturer in French. After
four terms he resigned and embarked on a period of restless travel. In 1937,
Beckett decided to settle in Paris, and became a citizen of a country that was
neutral in WWII; he was able to remain there even after the occupation of
Paris by the Germans. He joined the underworld movement, a resistance
group in 1941. When he received news that some of his friends were
arrested, he immediately went into hiding, and gradually moved to the
unoccupied zone of France where he worked as a laborer in agriculture.
o In 1945, he returned to Ireland and volunteered for the Irish Red Cross. After
that, he was back in France as an interpreter in a military hospital. some of
his major works are: Murphy a novel on an Irish man, Waiting for Godot,
and End Game. The best play that made Beckett’s fame is Waiting for
Godot.
o Beckett’s philosophical system is based on paradox (good and bad, night and
day,..etc.). To him, thought is useless because it takes the individual
nowhere. Thought to Beckett, can reveal nothing; thought is beyond the
compass of the human mind. To Beckett, ultimate truth is beyond the
compass of the human mind, so why should we think; we only do things
repetitively. Truth does not exist in our world, and that’s why our life
becomes hopeless, meaningless and helpless; one can tell that this universe is
a universe of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and helplessness; a world of
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incomprehensibility. This sense of incomprehensibility leads the individual
to his feeling or sense of pessimism.
o Beckett dealt with human beings in such extreme situations. Not because he
was interested in pessimism, or in disease, the aspect of human life; but
because he concentrated on the essential aspect of the human existence,
experience; the subject matter of so many war literature. Those who exist are
those who make a change in life; like the prophet, great people in history,
William Shakespeare…etc. Beckett asked questions on how we can come to
terms with the fact of our existence; we have been thrown into this world,
into being. What is the true nature of ourselves? What does a human being
mean when he says I exist? Is the I of an oppressor? Is it an I that crushes the
people? An I of a tyrannical figure? Or an I of a human being who is able to
communicate with others as human beings?
End …
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