“Umursamazsan ölürsün”: Arnold Wesker’ın Arpalı Tavuk Çorbası ve John Osborne’un Öfke Adlı Oyunlarında “Canlılık” Kavramı

Year 2023, Volume: 1 Issue: 2, 162 - 179, 26.09.2023

Sarah-jane Coyle

Abstract

“Canlılık” kavramının tiyatro ve performans çalışmalarıyla uzun süredir devam eden bir ilişkisi bulunmaktadır. Bu ilişki öncelikle tiyatronun geçici doğasını neyin oluşturduğu ve giderek dijitalleşen bir çağda performansta neyin “canlılık” sayılacağı gibi ontolojiye dair sorularla sınırlı kalmıştır. Buna karşın bu makale, 1950’lerin Britanya'sının iki önemli oyununda, Arnold Wesker’ın Arpalı Tavuk Çorbası ve John Osborne’un Öfke adlı oyunlarında “canlılığı” bir doktrin ve yaygın bir ideoloji olarak ele alacaktır. Her iki oyun da duygu dramlarını temsil eder. Onlar, Britanya’nın köhneleşmiş sınıf sistemi ve savaş sonrası toplumuna dair hayal kırıklıklarını ifade etmek için oyun yazan bir grup işçi sınıfı tiyatro yazarını tanımlayan bir terim olan Öfkeli Genç Adamlar hareketinin üyeleri tarafından yazılmıştır. Bu makale, edebi ve tarihsel analizin yanı sıra yakın okumayı da kullanarak, Öfkeli Genç Adamlar’ın “öfkesinin” sadece hoşnutsuz liberaller için bir tanımlama olmadığını, bu oyunlarda gündelik kapitalist yaşamın standartlaştırılmış kültürüne direnmenin bir aracı olarak “canlılığı” ve canlılığı somutlaştırmanın önemini vurgulayan daha geniş bir hareketin parçası olduğunu tartışacaktır.

Keywords

Canlılık, İşçi Sınıfı, Duygulanım, Sosyalizm, Kriz, Duygu

”If you don't care you’ll die” : The Concept of “Liveness” in Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup with Barley and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger

Abstract

The phenomenological concept of “liveness” has a long-standing relationship with theatre and performance studies. This relationship has primarily been limited to questions of ontology; namely, what constitutes the ephemeral nature of theatre and what counts as “liveness” in performance in an increasingly digitised age. By contrast, this article will consider “liveness” as a doctrine and pervasive ideology in two landmark plays of 1950s Britain, Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup with Barley, and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. Both plays represent dramas of emotion and were written by members of the “angry young men” movement, a term denoting a group of working-class dramatists, who used their work to express frustration with Britain’s outdated class system and post-war society. By employing close reading alongside literary and historical analysis, this article will argue that the “anger” of the angry young men is not just a descriptor for disaffected liberals but is part of a wider movement in these plays emphasising the importance of embodying “liveness” and vitality as a means of resisting the standardised culture of everyday capitalist life.

Keywords

Liveness, Affect, Working-class, Socialism, Crisis, Feeling

References

• Adler, T. P. (1979). The Wesker Trilogy Revisited: Games to Compensate for the Inadequacy of Words. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 65, 429-38. Doi: 10.1 080/00335637909383493.
• Adorno, T., Horkheimer, M. (1997). Dialectic of Enlightenment. (John Cumming, Trans.). London, England: Verso. Originally published 1944.
• Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In L. Althusser (Ed.), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York, USA: Monthly Review Press.
• Arendt, H. (1976). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, NY: Harcourt.
• Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations. (Harry Zohn, Trans. Hannah Arendt, Ed.) New York, NY: Schocken Books.
• Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
• Billington, M. (2005, April 9). The party’s over. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/apr/09/theatre
• Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London, England: Verso. Camus, A. (2013). The Myth of Sisyphus. London, England: Penguin. (Original work published in English in 1955). Coppieters, F. (1975). Arnold Wesker’s Centre Forty-two: A Cultural Revolution Betrayed. Theatre Quarterly, 18, 37-54.
• Dolan, Jill. (2010). Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Drabble, M. (1975). Arnold Wesker. The New Review, 11, 25-30.
• Eliot, TS. (1951). Selected Essays (3rd ed.). London, England: Faber and Faber.
• Fletcher, J., Spurling, J. (1972). Beckett: A Study of His Plays. London, England: Methuen.
• Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
• Giesekam, G. (2000). Waiting for Webster – Look Back in Anger and the Absurd. In AR Corseuil and JM Caughie (Eds.), Estudos Culturais (pp. 93-116). Florianopolis, Brazil: Digitalixa Conteudo.
• Gilleman, L. (2002). John Osborne: Vituperative Artist. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Gilleman, L. (2012). John Osborne: the drama of emotions. In David Pattie (Ed.), Modern British Playwrighting: The 1950s (pp.146-170). London, England: Methuen.
• Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. (1971). (Geoffrey N Smith and Quintin Hoare, Trans.) London, England: International Publishers.
• Hall, S. (1981). Beyond Naturalism Pure: The First Five Years. In Charles Marowitx, Tom Milne and Owen Hale (Eds.), New Theatre Voices of the Fifties and Sixties: Selections from Encore Magazine 1956-1963 (pp. 212-220). London, England: Methuen.
• Heidegger, M. (1967). Being and Time. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
• Hobspawn, E. (1969). Industry and Empire. Middlesex, England: Pelican.
• Hoggart, R. (1957). The Uses of Literacy. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
• Husserl, E. Welton, D. (Ed.) (1999). The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Indianapolis, USA: Indiana University Press.
• Innes, C. (2002). Modern British Drama. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Kitchin, L. (1962). Mid-Century Drama. London, England: Faber.
• Lacey, S. (1995). British Realist Theatre: The New Wave in Its Context 1956-65. London, England: Routledge. Langhamer, C. (2005). The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain. Journal of Contemporary History, 40(2), 341-362. Doi: 10.1 1 77/0022009405051556.
• Leavis, FR. (1948). The Great Tradition. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
• Levinas, E. (1989). The Levinas Reader. (Seán Hand, Ed.) Oxford, England: Blackwell.
• Lyotard, J. (1986). The Postmodern Condition. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
• Macmillan, H. (1957). Leader’s Speech, Brighton. Retrieved from http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=107 Macnicol, J. (1999). From Problem Family’ to ‘Underclass’, 1945-95. In Rodney Lowe and Helen Fawcett (Eds.), Welfare Policy in Britain: The Road from 1945 (pp. 66-93). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave.
• Maschler, T. (1957). Declaration. London, England: MacGibbon & Kee.
• Massumi, B. (1995). The Autonomy of Affect. Cultural Critique, 31, 83-109. Doi: 10.2307/1354446.
• Nietzsche, F. (2006). The Gay Science (1882). Thomas Common (Trans.). New York, USA: Dover Publications, Inc.
• Osborne, J. (1957). They Call It Cricket. In Tom Maschler (Ed.), Declaration. London, England: MacGibbon and Kee.
• Osborne, J. (1991). Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, 1955-66. London, England: Faber and Faber.
• Osborne, J. (1996). Look Back in Anger. In Plays One (pp. 2-95). London, England: Faber and Faber. (Originally performed in 1956).
• Patterson, M. (2009). Struggles in British Theatre: post-war British Playwrights. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Pattie, D. (2012). Modern British Playwriting: the 1950s. London, England: Methuen.
• Phelan, P. (2003). Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London, England: Routledge.
• Ponnuswami, M. (1998). Histories of the New Left. In Reade W Dornan (Ed.), Arnold Wesker – A Casebook (pp. 136-162). London, England: Garland.
• Rebellato, D. (1999). 1956 and All That: The Making of Modern British Drama (London: Routledge, 1999) Russell Taylor, J., Osborne, J. (1968). Look Back in Anger - A Casebook. London, England: Macmillan.
• Shepherd, S. (2009). The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Theatre. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Sierz, A. (2008). John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. London, England: Continuum.
• Slotkin, R. (1986). Myth and the Production of History. In Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen (Eds.), Ideology and Classic American Literature (pp. 70-91). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Spinoza, B. (2004). Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Jonathan Bennett, Trans.) London, England: Early Modern Texts. (Original work published 1665).
• Tynan, K. (1956, May 3). The Voice of the Young. The Observer. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/1956/may/13/stage Tynan, K. (1964). Tynan on Theatre. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
• Wandor, M. (2001). Post-War British Drama: Looking Back in Gender. London, England: Routledge.
• Wesker, A. (1981). ‘A Sense of What Should Follow’: Interview with Simon Trussler. In Simon Trussler (Ed), New Theatre Voices of the Seventies (pp. 145-156). London, England: Methuen.
• Wesker, A. (2003). Interview Transcript with Ewan Jeffrey (Theatre Archive Project, British Library). Retrieved from: https://sounds.bl.uk/Arts-literature-and-performance/Theatre-Archive-Project/024M-1CDR0025463X-0100V0
• Wesker, A. (2011). Chicken Soup with Barley. London, England: Methuen. (Originally performed 1958).
• Williams, R. (1958). Culture and Society. London, England: Hogarth Press.
• Williams, R. (1961). The Long Revolution. London, England: Pelican Press.
• Wilson, C. (2007). The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men. London, England: Robson Books.
• Worth, K. J. (1968). The Angry Young Man. In John Russell Taylor (Ed.), John Osborne: Look Back in Anger - A Casebook (pp. 101-117). London, England: Macmillan.