MODERN DRAMA

1
MODERN DRAMA

• (Survey)

2
SYNONYMS

• Theatre of Cruelty
• Theatre of the Absurd
• Anti-theatre
• Theatre of Silence

3
Initiated by

• John Osborne
• "Look Back in Anger"
• (1956)

• Samuel Beckett
• "Waiting for Godot"
• (1956)

4
NEW CONTENTS

• No middle class environment anymore, but working
  class background
• violence, which has some strange fascination
• fears of different kinds
• ruthlessness
• inability to communicate gtgt lack of
  communication
• loneliness
• ?
• craving for love / friendship / close
  relationships
• sex (often not heterosexual)

5
AIMS

• Demonstration of the chaos and incoherence of
  ordinary speech
• Revelation of fundamental problems in society
• ?
• social criticism

6
STYLE

• satire
• sick humour

7
FURTHER REPRESENTATIVES

• Alan Ayckbourn Harold Pinter
• James Saunders Tom Stoppard

8
Possibilities of representing characters

• by....
• the description of the character in the stage
  directions
• what he says and how he behaves
• what other characters say about him/her