STAGE TECHNIQUES IN CLIFFORD ODETS'S PLAYS

Abstract

Clifford Odets is one of the leading play writers of American agit-prop drama. He experienced the great economical depression of 1930s in USA and observed the difficulties such as starvation, unemployment, immigration from rural to urban that people faced. Odets, who reflects all of those problems in his works, like other American leftist writers tried the change the political system, and this change is presented as the main solution for all the problems. He accepts art as a weapon under the order of ideology. So beginning with his one-act play Waiting for Lefty, he wrote agit- prop play in order to convince the audience to be in action to change the system. Odets wrote four plays during the era when he was one of the members of American Communist Party. In his plays, he uses a stage appropriate to the concept of new stage of the 20th century. Odets is against the conventional theatre and its stage without a strong decoration. He uses lights very strongly to share the stage. Especially his simple stage and lightening system is relevant to the alienation effect used in epic theatre. This features of the stage of the era can easily be seen in his plays Waiting For Lefty, Awake and Sing, Till The Day I Die and Paradise Lost.