RHOSE #35 | “You’re not at home”: the Representation of Familial Spaces in Arnold Wesker’s Plays.

RHOSE – Representations of Home Open Seminar 35:  In collaboration with The Reception and Translation Studies Group

ABSTRACT: Since the performance of his first produced play Chicken Soup with Barley in 1958, Arnold Wesker has been identified as a political writer whose work is fed directly by his life experiences. The Trilogy is particularly striking in identifying familial bonds as central to his reflection on human nature since it focuses on the members of the Kahn family over a timespan of some thirty years and indirectly teases the notion of home. The infamous cue by Sergeant Hill in Chips with Everything (1962) – “You’re not at home” – signalled a departure from the family locus towards more experimental forms and concerns that moved away from family units. Yet, his last play, Joy and Tyranny (2011) also chooses as a central thread the stories of a family – albeit one that presents no homely picture. This seminar aims to question the representation of home in Wesker’s work to explore home as a place, home as a concept diversely associated to family, friends, or community, and home as a quest.

 Keywords: Wesker; political theatre; socialism; family; community; love; protest; naturalism; abstraction.

Bio blurb

Anne Etienne lectures in Modern and Contemporary Drama in the Department of English, University College Cork. Her research focuses on theatre censorship, Arnold Wesker, and contemporary Irish theatre. She authored essays on those topics for international journals and collective volumes. Her publications include Theatre Censorship: from Walpole to Wilson (Oxford University Press, 2007), and the co-edited volumes Populating the Stage: Contemporary Irish Theatre (Palgrave, 2017), Arnold Wesker: Fragments and Visions (Intellect, 2021), Adult Themes: British Cinema and the X Certificate in the Long 1960s (Bloomsbury, 2023), Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest (2024), and the Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (2024). She is co-editor of the series Palgrave Studies in Cultural Censorship. She is currently developing new projects on Arnold Wesker.

Date: February 27, 2025
Schedule: 10:00
Venue: FLUL, Room B112.C
Zoom Link: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/94051268144 | Meeting ID: 940 5126 8144