Arnold Wesker Research Articles

Beyond Pragmatism: A Study of Harold Pinter’s Plays

The present research work aims to study Harold Pinter’s pragmatic views in his plays. Some British life, Harold Pinter, looked thick like John Osborne and Arnold Wesker, but incredibly wonderful among the most pragmatic modern British players. Pinter shares the realistic social obligations of the people of the same era. This is a situation, character, and completely realistic language. His dramatic situations are common: the tramp discusses with two brothers the opportunity to become a career for their round-world apartment; The young man loses his composure during a party on the occasion of his anniversary of the presence of two men whom he does not know; The couple reflect on the seller of the match outside their bungalow and, finally, invites them inside. The characters are as common as situations: non-heroic people of the city's intermediate and lower classes. The conversations were carefully and accurately transcribed versions of ordinary conversation. It was from this grain that the realists of the Osborne school made the leaven of social protest. But behind the realistic prose of Pinter's plays lurks the spirit of a poet, transforming the same dreary material into something closer to poetry than anything else we bear the name for.

“The Law is a Terrifying Thing”: Anti-semitic Misuse of the Law in Arnold Wesker’s Shylock

“The Law is a Terrifying Thing”: Anti-semitic Misuse of the Law in Arnold Wesker’s Shylock

Re-presenting Shylock: An Examination of Post-Holocaust and Adaptation in The Merchant of Venice Play and Film Adaptations

This paper examines the depiction of Jews, particularly the character of Shylock, in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in comparison with those of two adaptations: Arnold Wesker's play The Merchant and Michael Radford's film The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare's original work has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, with some perceiving it as perpetuating negative stereotypes and others as offering a nuanced and complex view of the character. Wesker's adaptation reinterprets the portrayal of Jews to challenge the negative representation in Shakespeare's play, highlighting themes of love, family, and relationships. Radford's film, on the other hand, offers a more nuanced and dynamic portrayal of the Jewish community than we are used to seeing in representations on film, and sheds light on the impact of anti-Semitic prejudice. It focuses on highlighting the Jewish/Christian disagreement and the extent to which Jews are victimized in Shakespeare's play, using filmic techniques to create a powerful representation with a deeper understanding of justice, discrimination, and dehumanization. Both adaptations offer a more nuanced portrayal of the Jewish community and challenge negative stereotypes perpetuated by Shakespeare's original work.

“A lot of blood gets lost here” : Class Struggle and Ideology in The Kitchen

Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen (1957) presents the world of labour where the two social classes, the capitalist class and the working class, with hierarchies between each other and among themselves, clash, which ends with the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. The harsh working conditions at the restaurant, the changing pace of work, little time given by the employer to the employees to rest and socialise, and the dehumanising aspect of labour are presented through the relationships between the two social classes and also among the working class people. Hence, the aim of this paper is to argue that the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class based on labour and production and the working class people’s submission to the practices of the ruling class in The Kitchen can be analysed through the Marxist concepts of class conflict and ideology, respectively. Accordingly, it will be demonstrated that class conflict is seen not only between the bourgeoisie, the owner of the capital, and the proletariat, the agent of production, but also among the members of the proletariat of different nationalities, which is expressed through racial hatred. Furthermore, it will be displayed that the employees of the restaurant not only consciously accept the economic conditions under which they work but also reveal their cultural/artistic tastes during short breaks that are set by the employer, which shows that both work and leisure are controlled by the capitalist class.

The Transition from Domestic Sphere to International Sphere in Pinter’s Political Play: Ashes to Ashes

Motivated by the absurd tradition in the 1950s, in the following years, Pinter transitioned comedy of menace to the memory plays. With the political drama booming in the 1960s although the playwrights of the period such as John Arden, Arnold Wesker, Edward Bond have written down overtly political plays, Pinter continued to write implicit plays unlike the writers of that time. By the time the political drama was on the decline, with the effect of globalization, Pinter wrote very overtly political plays after the 1980s. As a matter of fact, Pinter revived the New British Theatre with his third period plays such as One for the Road and Mountain Language. Pinter who gained prominence with the latest period plays, has also exceeded the borders of his country; therefore, he referred to the social and political cases he observed in other countries. He addressed several international issues, including the Gulf War, American dominance over other countries, and disempowerment of minority rights. He repudiated the borders pertained at his interviews, even sharply criticised the British politics with courage. Pinter, who was awarded the Nobel Prize, did not hesitate to criticize the policies of England and America with great heart, even in his Nobel speech. Pinter, who handled only British issues in his own country in the early period plays, became the voice of many countries in the latest period plays. Pinter, who never admitted to being a political playwright, was almost always annoyed being tagged, and tried to be the voice of whole world while cutting across all boundaries. This paper discusses Pinter’s domestic sphere in his early phase turns into a universally oppressive space filled with violence, rape, death and surveillance in his late plays. It is seen that the dramatised space in Pinter’s late plays has been widened both literally and figuratively. The image of “room” is superseded by the global cities and foreign countries as the locus of oppression and the centre of political power. His late stage goes beyond the world of the theatre as the paper will reveal that Pinter's political play entitled as Ashes to Ashes cuts across all boundaries.Keywords: Pinter, international issues, playwright who has no boundaries, political drama, Ashes to Ashes

Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant: Wesker Is My Name

This study seeks to examine how Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant (1976) appropriates the canonical Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1595). The study investigates Wesker’s reasons behind his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Shylock as a British working-class Jewish playwright. Employing multicultural perspectives, this study discusses how Wesker rewrote his Shylock, subverting and redeeming Shakespeare’s Shylock, and how Wesker’s version represents class, race, religion, and other cultural phenomena to resemble or differ from the original text’s representations. The paper is interested in exploring how Wesker reshapes the popular imagination, the ideological assumptions of the public, and how the cultural tradition of Shakespearean Shylock is viewed. Wesker’s personal struggle as a Jewish working-class playwright is one of the vital variables examined in this study. The study reveals how Wesker voices his own literary thought, ideological philosophies, and anger, redeeming himself of the discrimination and the feeling of being an outsider in the British Theatre establishment.

Representations of Shylock in Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant, Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name and Clive Sinclair’s Shylock Must Die

Given the centrality of Shakespeare to the Western canon and, more specifically, to the idea of a national English literary tradition, and given that Shylock is one of his most (in)famous creations, it is hardly surprising that he has proved irresistible to a number of Anglo-Jewish authors. Attempts to rehabilitate Shylock and/or to reimagine his fate are not a recent phenomenon. In the post-war era, however, the task of revisiting Shakespeare’s play took on a new urgency, particularly for Jewish writers. In this essay I look at the ways in which three contemporary British Jewish authors—Arnold Wesker, Howard Jacobson and Clive Sinclair—have revisited The Merchant of Venice, focusing on the figure of Shylock as an exemplar of what Bryan Cheyette has described as “the protean instability of ‘the Jew’ as a signifier”. Wesker, Jacobson and Sinclair approach Shakespeare’s play and its most memorable character in very different ways but they share a sense that Shylock symbolically transgresses boundaries of time and space—history and geography—and is a mercurial, paradoxical figure: villain and (anti-)hero; victim and perpetrator; scapegoat and scourge. Wesker’s play is more didactic than the fiction of Jacobson and Sinclair but ultimately his Shylock eludes the historicist parameters that he attempts to impose on him, while the Shylocks of Shylock is My Name and Shylock Must Die transcend their literary-historical origins, becoming slippery, self-reflexive, protean figures who talk back to Shakespeare, while at the same time speaking to the concerns of contemporary culture.

Beatie Bryant’s Quest for her Roots through Self Discovery and Expression: A study of Sir Arnold Wesker’s “Roots”

The Wesker Trilogy is critically acclaimed as one of the most ambitious project by a young playwright under the age of thirty years. The trilogy in its broader aspect reflects the situation of the working class community after the Second World War was over. Roots is the central play of the famous trilogy which deals with the personal aspect of the humanitarian society. The story revolves around the protagonist of the play and gives an account of a fortnight in Beatie’s life. All her dreams shattering within a fortnight and her journey towards the path of self discovery become the central theme of the play. Beatie Bryant turns out to be the spoke person of the working class people and the play mainly focuses on the problems of working class in the 20th century. Beatie finally succeeds in librating herself from the fixed ideologies of society and finds a voice and thought of her own. She establishes her identity and her power of expression by asking questions and not by involving in some revolutionary acts.

Waiting: Arnold Wesker and The Nottingham Captain

ABSTRACTArnold Wesker’s 1962 musical play about Jeremiah Brandreth and the Pentrich Uprising (1817), presented at a series of Centre 42/Trade Union festivals held around the Midlands and the South of England, focuses questions of class, cultural consumption and the education of ‘the people’ in their own history, in the postwar years. The article considers dissemination of ideas about the Luddites in postwar history broadcasting, including schools broadcasting. A long trajectory of ideas about ‘teaching culture’, from William Morris, via the early labour movement, to Arnold Wesker, is traced out. Wesker’s play The Nottingham Captain (Jeremiah Brandreth) is discussed in relation to the radical playwrights and theatre companies who, in the 1960s and 1970s, argued that the best way to reach working-class audiences was to infuse traditional and popular forms with radical content. Ways of ‘writing the working-class’ in film and television are also considered.

To Speak or Not to Speak:

In the hierarchized space of society, individuals are always expected to fit in and perform certain roles in order to be accepted and accommodated into it. Any questioning of the dominant ideology and deviation from the socially prescribed rules immediately brings the deviant individual under a social scanner, and every measure is taken to eliminate or silence such disruptive presence. Patriarchy, being a supremacist discourse, attempts to promote and perpetuate its hold on society as much through promoting narratives of male superiority and worthiness as through constructing a false discourse of female inferiority, ineligibility and lack. Needless to say, the most significant impact of this manipulated knowledge can be seen in the historical expulsion of women from the territories of speech and free expression. This paper re-reads the British playwright Arnold Wesker’s 1981 play Annie Wobbler with a view to highlighting how the female protagonist of the play breaks free from the shackles of a “normative” existence and reclaims her identity by voicing forth the silenced tales of her forbidden and potentially disruptive experiences. I have also tried to underline the various hazards of such a deviant act and how the female protagonist ultimately succeeds in subverting the patriarchal narratives of normalcy and respectability.

Arnold Wesker’s Rewriting of Shylock in The Merchant (1976) with a Purpose

Abstract Rewriting Shakespeare has become a global genre. Arnold Wesker was one of the trailblazers of the genre with his The Merchant (1976). This article argues that Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant, with both its subversion and extension of Shakespeare’s play, in theme, plot and characterization, engages with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by means of a counter-discourse. Wesker rewrote Shylock by focusing on two episodes in Shakespeare’s play: Jessica’s conversion to Christianity and Shylock’s self-defence. Wesker’s rewriting disrupts the binary as well as Christian conceptions to bestow upon the Jew the ‘protean quality’ of representing just about any sort of ‘Other’ but themselves. Wesker’s Shylock has a rounded humanity and is a cultured, humorous and book-loving Renaissance man. Wesker puts Shakespeare’s work under scrutiny as a culturally constructed world where life can be repositioned, and margins moved to the centre to be in a new light.

Arnold Wesker’s Rewriting of Shylock in The Merchant (1976) with a Purpose

Rewriting Shakespeare has become a global genre. Arnold Wesker was one of the trailblazers of the genre with his The Merchant (1976). This article argues that Arnold Wesker’s The Merchant, with both its subversion and extension of Shakespeare’s play, in theme, plot and characterization, engages with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by means of a counter-discourse. Wesker rewrote Shylock by focusing on two episodes in Shakespeare’s play: Jessica’s conversion to Christianity and Shylock’s self-defence. Wesker’s rewriting disrupts the binary as well as Christian conceptions to bestow upon the Jew the ‘protean quality’ of representing just about any sort of ‘Other’ but themselves. Wesker’s Shylock has a rounded humanity and is a cultured, humorous and book-loving Renaissance man. Wesker puts Shakespeare’s work under scrutiny as a culturally constructed world where life can be repositioned, and margins moved to the centre to be in a new light.

Wrestling with Shylock

Abstract How does Shakespeare’s ambivalent character Shylock affect British theatre artists of Jewish heritage today? Since the 1970s, stage adaptations of The Merchant by British Jewish directors and actors have struggled to glean an interpretation that would make The Merchant relevant or palatable for a post-Shoah generation. This article has a double focus: we discuss the difference between the adaptations of the older generation – Arnold Wesker’s character rewriting in The Merchant (1976) and Charles Marowitz’s deconstruction in Variations on the Merchant of Venice (1977) – and the contemporary revision in Julia Pascal’s 2008 The Shylock Play. Secondly, we focus on the reaction of contemporary Jewish theatre artists in Britain to the centrality of Shylock as the canonical figure of the Jew in Britain. We asked a number of contemporary British Jewish theatre artists – from Tom Stoppard to Samantha Ellis – about their personal relationship to Shylock and we present a digest of their responses.

Wrestling with Shylock

How does Shakespeare’s ambivalent character Shylock affect British theatre artists of Jewish heritage today? Since the 1970s, stage adaptations of The Merchant by British Jewish directors and actors have struggled to glean an interpretation that would make The Merchant relevant or palatable for a post-Shoah generation. This article has a double focus: we discuss the difference between the adaptations of the older generation – Arnold Wesker’s character rewriting in The Merchant (1976) and Charles Marowitz’s deconstruction in Variations on the Merchant of Venice (1977) – and the contemporary revision in Julia Pascal’s 2008 The Shylock Play. Secondly, we focus on the reaction of contemporary Jewish theatre artists in Britain to the centrality of Shylock as the canonical figure of the Jew in Britain. We asked a number of contemporary British Jewish theatre artists – from Tom Stoppard to Samantha Ellis – about their personal relationship to Shylock and we present a digest of their responses.

웨스커의 The Kitchen, 출구는 있는가?

This paper explores the representation of labor in Arnold Wesker’s play, The Kitchen. It explicates the ways in which the sinister vicious circle of labor, laborers, labor environment, a capitalist and the society are constructed in the kitchen at the restaurant Tivoli, the metaphor of the industrial capitalist society.BR It also pursues how the play’s pseudo absurd theater techniques such as the fragmented plot development, undeveloped characters, the chaotic exchanges of words and movements, the isolated spaces contribute to the intensity of the vicious circle without providing the solution to the problems. This paper finds that both the cooks and Marango are portrayed as the components of the vicious circle. Because they do not have meaningful identity separated from their work, they do not seem to have means to escape or break the circle. The society that values money and shows lack of sympathy for the weaker and the poorer seem to be the main cause of the vicious circle. Also this paper probes whether there are clues to resolve the vicious circle in the play. Even though one of the goals of Wesker’s theater is to educate the laborers, The Kitchen asks questions to the audience about what to do with the vicious circle rather than provides concrete suggestions or definite guidelines to solve the problems. None of the characters attain the definite ideas about how to abolish the vicious circle. The communal social awareness of employment-friendly labor environment is not attained. In the play there is no easy exit from the vicious circle. What the audience is expected to do is to find the qualities that all of the staff, Marango and their society do not achieve, such as sensitivity to the capitalist working system, the future vision for the service industry and the sympathy for the underdogs. Obviously their insensitivity and ignorance block their exit. The play using the kitchen, the uglier version of the capitalist society, challenges the audience to see what would happen to themselves if they lack the education that Wesker’s theater intends to provide. While enriching the social play’s tradition with various non-representational characteristics, The Kitchen not only embraces the labor class who has been isolated from the British theater monopolized by the upper class but also attains the goal of education, as Wesker intended to.

Making Peace or Piecemeal? Arnold Wesker's Screenplay and Wolfgang Storch's TV Adaptation of Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night

From 1983 to 1985 the British Jewish playwright Arnold Wesker worked on a film script for a German-Israeli TV adaptation of Arthur Koestler's propagandistic novel Thieves in the Night (1946), which chronicles a decisive phase in the triangular conflict among Arabs, Jews, and the British during the British Mandate for Palestine. Ultimately, Wesker's script was rejected, but in 1986 the dramatist published an excerpt in the Jewish Chronicle. Drawing on Wesker's original drafts and his correspondence relating to the project, this article contextualizes the publication of the so-called "Peace Making Ceremony" with the playwright's approach to his adaptation of the novel as a whole. It is argued that Wesker's main objectives were to preserve the integrity of the novel and to produce a "script of substance" that was to offer a historical argument rather than the "cowboys and Indian version" expected of him.

Making Peace or Piecemeal? Arnold Wesker's Screenplay and Wolfgang Storch's TV Adaptation of Arthur Koestler's <em>Thieves in the Night</em>

From 1983 to 1985 the British Jewish playwright Arnold Wesker worked on a film script for a German-Israeli TV adaptation of Arthur Koestler’s propagandistic novel Thieves in the Night (1946) which chronicles a decisive phase in the triangular conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British during the British Mandate for Palestine. Ultimately, Wesker’s script was rejected, but in 1986 the dramatist published an excerpt in the Jewish Chronicle. Drawing on Wesker’s original drafts and his correspondence relating to the project, this article contextualises the publication of the so-called “Peace Making Scene” with the playwright’s approach to his adaptation of the novel as a whole. It is argued that Wesker’s main objectives were to preserve the integrity of the novel and to produce a “script of substance” that was to offer a historical argument rather than the “cowboys and Indian version” expected of him. In a comparative analysis of Wesker’s successive script versions, Koestler’s novel, and the TV adaptation as it was eventually broadcast on German television in 1989, it is moreover suggested that the playwright sought to achieve a more sympathetic representation of the Palestinian Arabs that was reversed in the final script by the director of the mini-series, Wolfgang Storch. It is argued that the various stages of the international co-production and the clash of the frequently quite acerbic individual voices of those involved in it reveal competing motivations as well as conflicting and shifting strategies of representing the history of Israel and the Middle East conflict.

"Historical Argument" or "Cowboys and Indian"? Arnold Wesker's TV Screenplay of Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night

In October 1989 a TV adaptation of Arthur Koestler's novel Thieves in the Night (1946) was aired in three parts in Germany. The final script of the German-Israeli co-production was written by Wolfgang Storch, who also directed the miniseries. An earlier version of the screenplay had been commissioned by the German TV and radio station NDR from the British Jewish playwright Arnold Wesker. Based on the copious archival material held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, which includes the original drafts of the author's scripts and his correspondence relating to the project, this article explores Wesker's involvement in the production from 1983 to 1985, and the eventual publication of an extract from the dramatist's third draft in the Jewish Chronicle in 1986. Wesker's screenplay was ultimately rejected because his conception of a "historical argument" was not compatible with the "cowboys and Indian version" which, in the dramatist's words, was expected of him. It is argued that the increasingly acrimonious relationship among the screenwriter, the originally retained director, François Villiers, and various producers originated not only in conflicting approaches to the commercial and artistic dimensions of the project but also in divergent perceptions of the position of Israel and its history. This tension reveals different strategies of instrumentalizing the literary text and its TV adaptation for an understanding of the present.

“Historical Argument” or “Cowboys and Indian”? Arnold Wesker's TV Screenplay of Arthur Koestler's <em>Thieves in the Night</em>

In October 1989, a TV adaptation of Arthur Koestler’s novel Thieves in the Night (1946) was aired in three parts in Germany. The final script of the German-Israeli co-production was written by Wolfgang Storch who also directed the mini-series. An earlier version of the screenplay had been commissioned by the German TV and radio station NDR from the British Jewish playwright Arnold Wesker. Based on the copious archival material held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin which includes the original drafts of the author’s scripts and his correspondence relating to the project, this article explores Wesker’s involvement in the production from 1983 to 1985 and the eventual publication of an extract from the dramatist’s third draft in the Jewish Chronicle in 1986. Wesker’s screenplay was ultimately rejected because his conception of a “historical argument” was not compatible with the “cowboys and Indian version” which, in the dramatist’s words, was expected of him. It is argued that the increasingly acrimonious relationship between the screenwriter, the originally retained director Francois Villiers, and various producers originated not only in conflicting approaches to the commercial and artistic dimensions of the project but also in divergent perceptions of the position of Israel and its history and that it reveals different strategies of instrumentalising the literary text and its TV adaptation for an understanding of the present.

Remembering Arnold Wesker: Loose Connections from Left Field

Arnold Wesker, who died in April 2016, denied having been an ‘angry young man’ and, though the cliché clung, he declared, ‘But I am an angry old man.’ In this memoir, Simon Trussler, while reflecting on causes for the anger, does not attempt an analysis of the life and works, but recollects the times when their shared interests and intentions brought them into contact, and explores some of the reasons why the youthful climb to a peak of success was followed by a slow decline not in output or activity but in the critical response to a writer perceived as having gone out of fashion. NTQ's former co-editor, the late Clive Barker, was closely involved with Wesker in the early Centre Forty-Two project and its aim to open wider access to the arts, while Trussler helped to initiate Wesker's later involvement in the International Theatre Institute. Other ‘loose connections’ with Wesker's life and career here flesh out the facts and received opinions of the formal obituaries. Simon Trussler was one of the founding editors of the old Theatre Quarterly , as later of New Theatre Quarterly. He conducted two major interviews with Wesker in the original TQ, both later reprinted in book form, and with Glenda Leeming co-authored the first full-length study of Wesker's plays (Gollancz, 1981). Among many other publications, he is author of the award-winning Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre (1994).