Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker ( born May 24, 1932 in Stepney, in the proletarian East End of London ) is a British playwright.

Wesker was born the son of an immigrant Russian- Jewish tailor and a Hungarian mother, an active communist. The later socialist commitment Wesker is from literary studies probably founded already in his parents' house; as well as the autobiographical element in all his dramas is clearly visible. The theme of the wandering Jew is equally pronounced in his entire dramatic work.

After leaving school in Hackney Wesker made ​​in the Royal Air Force from 1950 to 1952 his military service - he used in Chips with Everything later exactly this scene. Before he began his literary activity after his release, he worked in the 1950s in odd jobs, inter alia, as a carpenter, carpenter 's assistant, harvesters, plumber 's assistant and kitchen help, finally as Pastrycook two years in London and nine months in Paris. These activities in various professional fields gave Arnold Wesker According to Oppel a wealth of experience, which allowed him to " make the claim to realism and immediacy of life in his plays. "

His interest in the dramatic arts Wesker showed early on through his participation in various stage performances. He played the role of the young poet Marchbanks in Shaw's Candida, for example, as an occasional actor.

In 1956 he took but little success in part to his first drama The Kitchen (German Kitchens) to a drama competition in the Observer; the piece was " not a full-length " have been rejected.

Young playwrights such as John Osborne motivated him to his first plays that fast for breakthrough and first helped him wider recognition. So in 1958, sponsored by the London School of Film Technique, had turned to the Wesker with a request for support, Chicken Soup with Barley (Eng. chicken soup with pearl barley ), partly under the influence of Osborne's Look Back in Anger ( ger look back in anger ). In the same year Wesker married the waitress Doreen Cecile Bicker.

Together with Osborne and other critical playwrights this time he is regarded as representative of the so-called Kitchen Sink Realism and the Angry Young Men movement.

The kitchen, chicken soup with pearl barley, Next Year in Jerusalem, and every day were his most important works from this period. Many of his pieces are critical of society from the thematically and adopt the perspective of the "little people" of the working class.

At the instigation of Wesker's a Trade Union Congress decided in 1960 to devote himself more to the arts. This decision shortly afterwards assumed concrete shape with the establishment of the Centre 42, the line Wesker ten years from 1961 to 1971, took over. The Round House, an old tram shed in Chalk Farm in London Borough of Camden has been acquired and developed, especially to artists to provide opportunities for experimentation and to lift at the same time within the meaning of the socialist attitude Wesker the cultural level of the working class.

Wesker's own development as a playwright took place with a few central themes, often autobiographical. Three different lines of development can be seen in essence, a "change of social environment in which his characters are located; a shift in the ideological foundations on which his thinking is based and, finally, consequently, a change in his poetic and dramatic means. "

Is it mainly a wide beam painted depiction of working-class and the world of work in The Kitchen, so address the later plays Wesker - probably in analogy to his own development - increasingly the problems of engaged intellectuals and identity difficulties.

Wesker's central theme is the " tension between a utopian state of targeting belief that [sic ] can be achieved far-reaching changes in society and a unit of life through acts of solidarity and a pessimistic assessment of the feasibility of such changes. "

After Wesker's own statements influences on his dramatic work of Sean O'Casey, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett are assumed; John Osborne's Look Back in Anger encouraged him to break with the existing conventions of the English theater and how Oppel writes ( " to live passion " German spirit) his "love of living" with the same " unashamedness " (Eng. mutatis mutandis " Raw caves awareness " ) to make, to which previously Dylan Thomas had struggled through as a poet. "

Later works of fiction, screenplays, poetry and radio plays were added.

However, his major work remains connected to the spectacle; his plays are translated into 17 languages.