Page 38 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes • Kitchen sink drama also known as kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a British
cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels,
film and television plays, whose ‘heroes’ usually could be described as angry young men.
• It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class
Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs,
to explore social issues and political controversies.
• The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas
in the North of England
• The cultural movement was rooted in the ideals of social realism, an artistic movement,
expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts working class activities.
• Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced by, or under the
supervision of the government. The leading characters are often ‘anti-heroes’ rather than part
of a class to be admired, as in Socialist realism.
• The kitchen-sink drama is placed in an ordinary domestic setting and typically tells a relatively
mundane family story.
• Kitchen sink drama is a genre of British drama which depicts the real and often sordid quality
of family life. The plays are socially and politically motivated, seeking to focus attention on
the destruction of moral values caused by consumerism and the break down of community.
• The 1950’s through the 1970’s saw the rise of one of the most important movements in modern
British theater: the Kitchen Sink drama.
• The term Angry Young Man often applied to the British ‘kitchen sink’ playwrights of the
1950s and also anyone, particularly young men obviously, who rails against the establishment.
• Angry Young Men were various British novelists and playwrights who emerged in the 1950s
and expressed scorn and disaffection with the established sociopolitical order of their country.
Their impatience and resentment were especially aroused by what they perceived as the
hypocrisy and mediocrity of the upper and middle classes.
• The Angry Young Men were a new breed of intellectuals who were mostly of working class
or of lower middle-class origin. Some had been educated at the postwar red-brick universities
at the state’s expense, though a few were from Oxford.
• The term was applied most notably to John Osbourne and it was from comments about his
Look Back in Anger, first performed in 1956, that the phrase became known.

2.5 Keywords
Criticism : Literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on
recurring myths and archetypes.
Character : A person who is responsible for the thoughts and actions within a story, poem, or
other literature. Characters are extremely important because they are the medium
through which a reader interacts with a piece of literature. Every character has
his or her own personality, which a creative author uses to assist in forming the
plot of a story or creating a mood. The different attitudes, mannerisms, and even
appearances of characters can greatly influence the other major elements in a
literary work, such as theme, setting, and tone.
Genre : A type of literature. We say a poem, novel, story, or other literary work belongs
to a particular genre if it shares at least a few conventions, or standard
characteristics, with other works in that genre. For example, works in the Gothic
genre often feature supernatural elements, attempts to horrify the reader, and
dark, foreboding settings, particularly very old castles or mansions.

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