Arcade of Memories

Look back in anger

This work of John Osborne, released in 1956 represents a rupture of the British traditional theatre. We must situate in the 50s to understand why.

In the mid-1950s, Britain was in a period of transition. When the Second World War have finished, the country tried to rebuild its happiness and austerity. Thus, there was a general feeling of disenchantment across the nation and citizens looked back nostalgically to the 30s and 40s. However, during the following years relevant events occupied the British´s media and were a remember for people of how was their nation before the war. The young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1952, The conquering of Everest by a British expedition headed by Edmund Hillary in 1953 and the running of the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister in 1954. (Reeves, 2005, pág. 3) On the one hand people wanted to forget all issues caused during the Second World War, but, on the other hand, they wanted to continue be the same people before it. They enjoyed national events and the classic theatre, which was a continue remembering of the Shakespearean age.

May be for Osborne this was the big reason to change the rules of theatre, where it was usual for people to see musicals, classical revivals and unreal stories on the stage. He decided to show to the audience a new kind of theatre, but a common story.

Kitchen Sink Drama

Osborne was the first who bring common aspects of real life to a stage with his work Look Back in Anger. What can be more common than a woman ironing at her house, or a couple making silly games to demonstrate their love and confidence, or a working class home as setting. The work that was concerned with working class and domestic issues becoming known as Kitchen Sink Drama. (Reeves, 2005, pág. 4) So that, John broke the traditional thought that established the classical theatre as the only way of doing theatre, he renew it completely.

Angry young men, Kitchen Sink Drama and Chilean Educational Movement today

       

Angry young men was a group of writers, both novelists and playwrights who focused their attention on the working classes, portraying the drabness, mediocrity and injustice in the lives of these people and directing their anger at the upper and middle class establishment. (Reeves, 2005, pág. 4) Kitchen Sink Drama was a new kind of theatre which left in the past the upper middle class as protagonists, and started to focus its attention on the real world, the common aspects of common people. (King, 2007)And the Chilean Educational Movement is an issue that has also paid important attention to the real situation of the nation, to the daily life of the working classes. Moreover, as the angry young men and the kitchen sink drama, Chilean Educational Movement, is the response to years and years of the same manipulation of reality. This movement is the action of braking rules and obstructions. It also shares with the angry young men their vision of the past, a past unchangeable before their interventions, a past of huge repudiation of what was happening, but a pacific way of showing their disapproval. Both nations, Britain and Chile needed a change at their specific times. In the case of British Nation, this change was carried out with the change in its theatre in the 50s, while in Chile this change is being carried out nowadays with the new generation of angry young students who expect to make a difference in our education.  

A cultural change is needed

It is necessary to mention that the change in British theater was needed because a cultural change was needed, people needed to forget about classism, they needed to start thinking about reality, about its new reality after war, and not trying to recover the past, a past full of ghost and classism. In the case of the nowadays Chilean state, a change in our culture is also needed, however, as Rojas Hernandez established, a cultural change is a slow process, it arises from individual and social interactions and it can be only accelerated  by protests and social movements that promote it. (Hernandez, 2012, pág. 74)So that, this new generation of students who want to make a change, who want to express their opinions, make critics about what they consider wrong, who want to show the nation ‘reality and who want to share with the entire world the classism that exist not only in Chile as a country, also in its education, they are our own Kitchen Sink Drama, they are our own angry young men. The Chilean students can make a change in Chilean history; Chilean angry young students look back in anger and represent all those voices who were silenced, all those voices who still want to say something. May be now is the moment of a change for our culture, may be it is a slow process, but we have already started. 

Can chilean students make a different in our culture? Can two totally different cultures have so many aspects in common to make a change?

Bibliography

Hernandez, J. R. (2012). Sociedad Bloqueada. Movimiento estudiantil, desigualdad y despertar de la sociedad chilena. En J. R. Hernandez, Sociedad Bloqueada. Movimiento estudiantil, desigualdad y despertar de la sociedad chilena (pág. 74). Santiago: Los leones.

King, K. (2007). Western Drama through the ages: a student reference guide. En K. King, Western Drama through the ages: a student reference guide (pág. 452). United States: Greenwood press.

Reeves, A. (2005). Look Back in Anger: A Resource Book. En A. Reeves, Look Back in Anger: A Resource Book. (pág. 3). Edinburgh: Lyceum Education Department.