PROFILE Arnold Wesker, Revolutionary Of The Theatre

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29315, 21 September 1960, Page 20

PROFILE Arnold Wesker, Revolutionary Of The Theatre

[By SIMON KAVANAUGH]

LONDON. If you measure success in critics’ praise and acclaim, he is among the most successful playwrights. If you measure it in financial terms he is a monumental flop. His four plays are written about and talked about; intellectually dissected and digested. But his bank balance remains hovering perilously between red and black. His name is coupled with Eugene (Rhinoceros) lonesco’s as a revolutionary of the theatre. But his greatest success enjoyed a mere 90-performance run. "Mature, Promising” He is singled out from the John (“Look Back in Anger") Osbornes, the Harold (“The Caretaker”) Pinters, the Brendan (“The Hostage”) Behans, and the Samuel (“Waiting for Godot”) Becketts as the most promising and mature playwright of the new generation. But Arnold Wesker, author of the trilogy “Roots,” “Chicken Soup with Barley,” "I’m Talking About Jerusalem,” and also “The Kitchen,” still slogs away in his three-room baseinent flat in Hackney, in London’s East End. Recently Mr Wesker was accorded the unique honour of having his trilogy presented at the Royal Court Theatre. The critics are raving about it. This happened when “Roots” was put on a year ago. In their notices they wrote of the urgency Mr Wesker had injected into his characters to show the fascination of culture; of the importance of his theme with a social conscience that is relative to the contemporary dilemma. And they scared the paying customers away. His audience was largely made up of gym-slip and shaggy sweater types—and quickly exhausted. Not the people Mr Wesker wanted to attract —the working class. Mr Wesker does not blame the critics for this. Nor, indeed, his plays. Cultural Barrier He lays full responsibility for the failure on the Labour Party and the trade union movement. He blames them for having emancipated the working class economically and neglecting to remove cultural barriers. And he has written to every union executive in the land urging them to awaken their members' cultural interests.

To the cynic this may seem like a calculated move to jam his own bread and butter. To those who know him it is a sincere attempt to get through to the theatreless millions. “I consider the working class to be a state of mind,” Mr Wesker says. “Art is not for the nobs.

and not for ‘tKem as has the money’.” And he means it. He feels strongly the theatre’s comparative isolation. He feels deeply that it should mean so little in the lives of the people he grew up with. He was born in the East End in 1932 of a Russian father and a Hungarian mother. His own formal education started in Hackney at a Jewish infants’ school. It progressed through three elementary schools in Stepney and Hackney—and ended with a course of shorthand and typing at Upton Central School.

At 18 he did his National Service in the R.A.F. and wrote a ‘‘bad novel,” Then came spells of eniployment as carpenter’s mate, apprentice to a furnisher, bookseller’s assistant, kitchen porter, plumber’s mate, beet picker, seed sorter and pastrycook. He was pastry cooking at a Norfolk hotel when he met his wife, who was a waitress there. They were married in 1958 and now have an eight-months-old son, Lindsay Joe Wesker. An Orwellian period of kitchen work in Paris and a term at the London School of Film Technique converted Wesker to “free cinema.” And reading Sean O’Casey and Arthur Miller brought him to the theatre. A Celebrity A socialist in conviction, he wrote about the people he knew. And suddenly this slight young man with keen brown eyes found himself a celebrity. But success has brought him little reward. “I don’t really care for money,” Mr Wesker says. _ "I can always go back to the

kitchen.” He would, however, like to buy a house. He wants to travel, but is frightened of too much travelling. "The more one travels, he says, "the bigger the world seems, the less effective your voice becomes. You realise there are 600 million Chinese who’ve never heard of you.” Eloquent and extremely intelligent, Mr Wesker realises fully the corroding effects of success. But he puts his trust in his down-to-earth wife, his son, and his loyalty to his own people. To him success means he can carry on writing and bring culture to the people. "Dirty Words” “Unfortunately Art and Culture are dirty words,” he says. “But I see them in terms of living and first-rate entertainment.” That is why Mr Wesker has written to union executives. He wants them to build theatres in industrial areas. He wants them to sponsor films, to support concerts of folk songs and work songs. “If the working class can understand permutations of football pools, they should understand Picasso,” he says. But Mr Wesker is a realist, too. He knows that nothing concrete is likely to come from his persopal campaign. Mr Frank Cousins, Sir Thomas Williamson, Sir Vincent Tewson, and Mr Frank Foulkes will probably stick to more recognisable union business and leave the theatre alone.— (Express Feature Service.)