Sara Martín Alegre P08/04540/02135

Arnold�Wesker
, 
Anne�Jellicoe
and 
John�Arden
.
It was also in the 1950s that 
Harold�Pinter
presented his masterpiece, 
The
Birthday Party
(1958). Pinter, still regarded today as the main figure of the
English stage, set with this absurdist play an apolitical alternative to Osborne's
theatre.
Pinter is perhaps Beckett's main disciple, though he lacks the
latter's philosopical, existentialist preoccupations. Yet Pinter's plays are
unmistakably his own. His antinaturalistic, minimalist, often violent
dramas, in which silence occupies the dramatist's attention as much
as speech, speak above all of the impossibility of communication. His
characters move in a void, in a bizarre world best defined by the
adjective 
Pinteresque
.
3.3. New theatre companies and the Arts Council
Between 1956 and 1966 there was an extraordinary transformation of the
English theatre. These years saw not only the emergence of many new
playwrights, but also the establishment in 1960 of the London branch of
the 
Royal�Shakespeare�Company
, directed by 
Peter�Hall
, and of the new
National� Theatre
company led by 
Laurence� Olivier
. Hall would replace
Olivier when the National Theatre moved to the new South Bank complex
in the 1970s.
The figure of the 
director
steadily grew in importance and so did the
companies formed around them. 
Joan� Littlewood's� Theatre� Workshop
, a
company that in 1953 moved to the 
Theatre�Royal
, located in a suburb of
London, was the most outstanding example of the cohesion then sought
between director, actors and authors.
Poster by J. J. Sorbie for a production of 
The
Homecoming
, written in 1965 by Harold Pinter,
at Johnson Hall Theatre under the direction
of M. Burns (Fort Collins, Colorado, artist's
collection).

---

© FUOC
• P08/04540/02135
24
Post-War English Literature 1945-1990
Littlewood's Workshop had much in common with