KITCHEN SINK DRAMA

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KITCHEN SINK DRAMA

• ARNOLD WESKER

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John Randall Bratby

• British painter and writer. Bratby was a
  versatile artist he painted portraits, still
  lifes, figure compositions, landscapes, and
  flower pieces, and also designed film sets. He is
  probably best known for the scenes of drab
  domestic life he painted in the 1950s, when he
  was a member of the Kitchen Sink School. Later
  his work became lighter and more exuberant. His
  talent for self-promotion helped to make him one
  of the best-known British artists of his
  generation. Among his publications are the novel
  Breakdown (1960) and a book on Stanley Spencer
  (1970).

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• His paintings reflected everyday domestic
  surroundings. Bratby believed that his paintings
  were rooted in general fifties attitudes and
  outlooks, being introvert, grim, khaki in
  colour, often opposed to prettiness, and
  dedicated to portraying a stark, raw, ugly
  reality'.

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KITCHEN SINK DRAMA

• The term Kitchen sink drama is used to describe
  a new kind of drama that was introduced into
  British stage with Osbornes Look Back in Anger
  (1956).
• This kind of drama used the working class setting
  with the working class characters.
• It was usually set in a bed-sit or flat and focus
  on domestic issues.

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• Kitchen Sink dramatists tried to draw a picture
  of the working class life.
• Arnold Wesker expressed his dissatisfaction with
  the society, taking a social point of view. This
  earned him being called Angry Young Men.
• Just like John Osborne, Wesker took a realistic
  approach in his plays.
• Wesker used emphatic endings, realistically
  detailed setting, and realistic dialogues and
  rounded characters.

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• Unlike the avant garde theatre and the theatre of
  absurd of Samuel Beckett, it had a social message
  and ideological stance , which was largely
  leftist.
• Kitchen Sink Drama depicted the everyday lives of
  ordinary people who struggle against the
  degredation of powerlessness, the loss of
  community or the deadening influence of the
  suburbia.
• John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney,
  John Arden were a part of this movement but never
  referred to themselves as Kitchen Sink
  Dramatists.

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• Arnold Wesker himself said Kitchen Sink Drama
  is a lazy description of a group that didnt
  exist.I certainly was not a conscious party to a
  countermovement to the drawing-room theatre. We
  were all so diverse

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ARNOLD WESKER

• Much of his works take their origin from his
  life. He has a working class background.
• He was born in Stepney, London, on 24 May 1932.
  He is the son of Jewish emigré parents. His
  father was a tailor and from Ukraine and his
  mother Hungarian.
• Before he became a playwright, he worked as
  carpenter,plumber, bookshop assistant and a cook.

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• Wesker founded the Roundhouses first theatre,
  called Centre 42 in 1964.
• His early works, The Kitchen and Roots were
  staged by the Royal Court Theatre.

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