Arnold Wesker (EPUB) von Anne Etienne

This new collection redefines Wesker’s place within theatre culture and questions the canonical boundaries associated with his work. Re-evaluating his legacy with new archival material, it explores his eclectic aesthetic range as well as his unerring concern for the human condition: a lasting ‘vision’ from hopeful socialists in the 1950s–60s. 18 illus.

Introduction 

Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders

Prologue: ‘It Matters’ 

Edward Bond

PART 1: EARLY VISIONS 

1. Radical Chic? Centre 42, the Roundhouse and How Culture Countered Wesker in the 1960s 

Lawrence Black

2. Introducing Mr Harold Wesker 

Graham Saunders

3. Roots: A Political Poem 

James Macdonald

4. The Enigma That Is Pip: A Character under Construction in Wesker’s Chips with Everything 

John Bull

5. Wesker’s Flawed Diamond: Their Very Own and Golden City 

Chris Megson

PART 2: UNIFYING FRAGMENTS 

6. ‘Let Battle Commence!’: The Wesker Controversies 

Harry Derbyshire

7. Representing Jewishness and Antisemitism in Arnold Wesker’s Work: Shylock, Badenheim 1939 and Blood Libel

Sue Vice

8. Wesker’s French Connections 

Anne Etienne

9. Wesker the Visual Artist – ‘Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life!’ 

Pamela Howard

10. A Charming Rogue: Wesker’s Relationship with Women – and with Himself 

Michael Fry

11. The Idea of Community in the Plays of Arnold Wesker from The Kitchen to Beorhtel’s Hill 

Robert Wilcher

Notes on Contributors