Arnold Wesker

Sir Arnold Wesker FRSL (24 May 1932 – 12 April 2016) was a British dramatist known for his contributions to world drama. He was the author of 50 plays, four volumes of short stories, two volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry, and other assorted writings. His plays have been translated into up to 20 different languages and performed worldwide.

Wesker was born in Stepney, London, in 1932, the son of Leah (née Cecile Leah Perlmutter), a cook, and Joseph Wesker, a tailor's machinist, and an active communist. He was delivered by Samuel Sacks, father of neurologist Oliver Sacks. He attended a Jewish Infants School in Whitechapel. His education was then fragmented during World War II. He was briefly evacuated to Ely, Cambridgeshire, before returning to London where he attended Dean Street School during the Blitz. He then returned to live with his parents who had moved to a council flat in Hackney, East London, where he attended Northwold Road School. He then attended Upton House Central School, Hackney, from 1943. This was a school where emphasis was placed on teaching office skills including typing to brighter boys who had not been selected for grammar school places. He was then evacuated again to Llantrisant, South Wales. He was accepted in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but could not afford to take up his place there. Later he went on to work as cook, furniture maker, bookseller and served for two years in the Royal Air Force.

Wesker's play Roots (1959) was a kitchen sink drama about a girl, Beatie Bryant, who returns after three years of stay in London to her farming family home at Norfolk and struggles to voice herself. Critics commended the "emotional authenticity" brought out in the play. Roots, The Kitchen, and Their Very Own and Golden City were staged by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre under the management of George Devine and later William Gaskill.

His inspiration for 1957 play The Kitchen, which was later made into a film, came when he was working at the Bell Hotel in Norwich. It was while working here that he met his future wife Dusty. Wesker's plays have dealt with themes including self-discovery, love, confronting death and political disillusion. Chicken Soup with Barley (1958) went out to the provinces, and rather than opening in the West End, its premiere was seen at the provincial Coventry Theatre, a locale which typified Wesker's political views as an 'angry young man'.

Wesker joined with enthusiasm the Royal Court group on the Aldermaston March in 1959. Another of the Royal Court contingent, Lindsay Anderson, made a short documentary film (March to Aldermaston) about the event. He was an active member of the Committee of 100 and, with other prominent members, was jailed in 1961 for his part in its campaign of mass nonviolent resistance to nuclear weapons.

He founded the Roundhouse's first theatre, called Centre 42, in 1964. He co-founded the Writers & Readers Publishing Cooperative Ltd with a group of writers that included John Berger, Lisa Appignanesi, Richard Appignanesi, Chris Searle and Glenn Thompson, in 1974.

Wesker's play The Merchant (which he later renamed Shylock) uses the same three stories used by Shakespeare for his play The Merchant of Venice. In this retelling, Shylock and Antonio are fast friends bound by a common love of books, culture and a disdain for the crass antisemitism of the Christian community's laws. They make the bond in defiant mockery of the Christian establishment, never anticipating that the bond might become forfeit. When it does, the play argues, Shylock must carry through on the letter of the law or jeopardize the scant legal security of the entire Jewish community. He is, therefore, quite as grateful as Antonio when Portia, as in Shakespeare's play, shows the legal way out. The play received its American premiere on 16 November 1977 at New York's Plymouth Theatre with Joseph Leon as Shylock, Marian Seldes as Shylock's sister Rivka and Roberta Maxwell as Portia. This production had a challenging history in previews on the road, culminating (after the first night out of town in Philadelphia on 8 September 1977) with the death of the exuberant Broadway star Zero Mostel, who was initially cast as Shylock. Wesker wrote a book, The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostel, chronicling the entire process from initial submissions and rejections of the play through to rehearsals, Zero's death, and the disappointment of the critical reception for the Broadway opening. The book reveals much about the playwright's relationship to director John Dexter (who had been the earliest, near-familial interpreter of Wesker's works), to criticism, to casting, and to the ephemeral process of collaboration through which the text of any play must pass.

In 2005, he published his first novel, Honey, which recounted the experiences of Beatie Bryant, the heroine of his earlier play Roots. The novel broke from the previously established chronology. Roots was set in the early 1960s and Beatie is 22; but in Honey she has only aged three years yet the action has been transplanted into the 1980s. Other oddities are that the timeframe includes the Rushdie affair and John Major's fall as recent events and yet the action is concerned with the dotcom boom.

In 2008 Wesker published his first collection of poetry, All Things Tire of Themselves (Flambard Press). The collection dates back many years and represents what he considered his best and most characteristic poems. He was a member of the editorial advisory board of Jewish Renaissance magazine.

He was a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.

He was the castaway on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, on in 1966 and again in 2006.

Archive

Wesker's papers, covering his entire career, were acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. The collection contains not only the prolific output of the playwright, novelist and poet but also is framed within the larger historical context of international events. Wesker was actively involved in the organizing of his archive, and before shipping it to the Ransom Center, Wesker compiled a list of the contents, which is also available to scholars for consultation. The collection's contents include over three hundred boxes of manuscript drafts, correspondence, production ephemera, personal records, and other materials. Wesker's family shipped the last of his papers to the Ransom Center in March, 2016 shortly before his death.

On 13 April 2016, the Leader of HM Opposition, Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn MP, gave thanks for the playwright's life. They shared a socialist background in London, where Corbyn is an MP.

I am sure the whole House will join me in mourning the death of the dramatist Arnold Wesker, one of the great playwrights of this country, one of those wonderful angry young men of the 1950s who ... changed the face of our country.

The BBC repeated in May 2016 the retrospective radio programme on Wesker's career first broadcast at his 80th birthday.

Wesker married Doreen Bicker, "Dusty", in 1958 and had three children Lindsay, Tanya and Daniel. Lindsay was named after director Lindsay Anderson. Tanya died in 2012. Wesker also had another daughter Elsa, with Swedish journalist, Disa Håstad. He was grandfather to Swedish rapper Yung Lean.

Wesker died on 12 April 2016. He was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Wesker received numerous awards throughout his career. In 1958 he received grant of GB£ 300 for the play Chicken Soup from the Arts Council of Great Britain. He used the money received to marry Bicker. The following year he won the Evening Standard Theatre Award in the "Most Promising Playwright" category. He was presented with the Italian Marzotto Prize (a cash award of £3000) in 1964 for Their Very Own and Golden City, and the Spanish Best Foreign Play Award in 1979. He became the fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985 and was presented with the Goldie Award in 1987. For his "distinguished service to theatre" he was honoured with the Last Frontier Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. He was knighted in the 2006 New Year's Honours list.

Wesker has written many plays, fictional and non-fictional works.

Plays

Fiction

Non-fiction