Kitchen Sink Drama and Naturalism: Trends of Post-War English Theatre

Abstract

The present paper studies Kitchen Sink Drama and Naturalism to investigate how a cultural movement through which artists like Arnold Wesker, John Osborne, and Shelagh Delaney express their disillusionment during the post-war period representing the reality of their lives via theatre. The period of 1956–1965 can be considered as a period of time identifying post-war British theatre which is related to post-war cultural, social, and political developments. In this period, playwrights take a social stance which reflects daily experiences of workingclass undergoing social and political changes in that time. Following the destructive consequences of the First and Second World Wars social, religious, and political alterations resulted in unemployment, insecurity, and frustration in society, especially among young educated people who returned from the war.The Kitchen Sink Drama is a peculiar type of drama for plays written within the mode of the new wave of British Realism in which plays are staged in domestic settings with a Naturalistic representation of ordinary life.