ABSTRACT
The New Wave is often referred to as a realist theatre. The terms realism and ‘social realism’ are omnipresent in critical discussion of the period; and although ‘realism’, even in its most expansive definition, does not adequately describe every manifestation of the new drama, it is a term that resonates throughout the late fifties and early sixties, partly because it suggests a range of ambitions (in the plays, the writers and the companies) that are not simply theatrical but are political and social as well. Realism is a critical term that is used of other cultural forms, too, and the resurgence of realism in the cinema and the novel as well as the theatre testified not only to the existence of roughly comparable aesthetic strategies but also of a similar cultural politics. Realism usually becomes an issue in a culture when the representation, exploration and analysis of a society is on the agenda, and this is the principal reason why realism will have a significant presence in this book.
