Sara Martín Alegre P08/04540/02135

3.4. Theatre from the mid-1960s onwards
By the mid-1960s the distinctions between experimental and established
theatre were becoming blurred: conventional plays such as 
Robert�Bolt
's 
A
Man for All Seasons
were praised by the critics; Osborne's more demanding

---

© FUOC
• P08/04540/02135
25
Post-War English Literature 1945-1990
plays were staged in the West End. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter
continued writing their minimalist drama, increasingly focusing on the
meaning of silence.
The so-called "
kitchen-sink
" playwrights, those interested, like 
Arnold
Wesker
, 
Brendan�Behan
and 
Shelagh�Delaney
, in the daily dramas of the
lower-middle and working classes, had somehow lost momentum. Despite
their efforts, it is difficult to say to what extent they succeeded in creating a
genuine working-class theatre in England.
The late 1960s also brought the 
end�of�stage�censorship
: the rule of the
Lord Chamberlain was abolished in 1968. This gave younger authors a
greater freedom of language and allowed them to go much further than
the 
Angry�Young�Men
or the working-class dramatists in their virulent
social criticism.
Several new trends thus merged in the mid-1960s with the rise of the second
wave of new dramatists, who still dominate the English stage today. 
Tom
Stoppard
brilliantly continued the tradition of experimentalism first set up by
Beckett and Pinter with 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
(first presented
at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in 1965), responding to their minimalism
with a rich, luxuriant use of dialogue.
The ludicrous and the outlandish, influenced by Antonin Artaud's theatre
of cruelty and Eugene Ionesco's absurdist drama, inspired the disruptive,
carnivalesque work of