Realism/naturalism

The terms ‘realism’ and ‘naturalism’ are often conflated. Certainly they are related – both are artistic movements that emerged in the nineteenth century. Both movements sought to present real life, in as accurate detail as possible, although naturalism was often more concerned with ‘environment’ than realism was. As the theorist Raymond Williams writes, the ‘novelty’ of naturalism was ‘its demonstration of the production of character or action by a powerful natural or social environment’.¹⁰

In Wasted, the opening stage directions, which are unusually detailed in their descriptions, suggest the way the characters are ‘produced’ by their social environments. We see, in turn, each of the characters in their workplaces (Ted in an office, Charlotte in the staffroom of a secondary school; Danny, whose job is as a part-time musician, is at the tail end of a party). The stage directions offer an exaggerated realism, where cardboard cut-outs stand in for fellow humans. Ted’s colleagues are described as ‘blown up, monstrous versions’ of themselves; Charlotte’s have ‘massive eyebrows, ears, lips’; Danny’s party-mates are similarly ‘monstrous’ and ‘massive’.¹¹ This exaggerated form highlights the characters’ sense of feeling alone and out of place in the world they inhabit. These soulless work environments frame the action of the subsequent scenes, as the characters reveal their dissatisfaction and misery. The importance of these work environments in conditioning the characters’ dissatisfaction is further emphasized at the end, when the opening motifs are repeated.

Each of the ‘Scenes’ in the play is presented in a realist dialogue. That is, the characters speak to one another in ways that are very similar to how people speak to one another in real life, and they are placed in recognizable social situations and environments. This realism suggests that the Scenes reflect ‘real life’, and also show us how the characters are trapped by their real lives, which are repetitive and mundane. We get a sense of this in the lead up to and at the party scene: the ‘wasted’ characters have been here before. So, too, the opening and closing motifs suggest the characters’ endless and repetitive routines. As we are told in the Chorus, ‘nothing changes’.

This sense of changelessness shifts momentarily towards the end of Wasted, with Charlotte’s plans to break out of the routine of her life and travel the world. However, these plans are thwarted because she is ‘wasted’: even she cannot follow through with a life radically different to the one she is living now. When juxtaposed with the more hopeful Chorus, the sense of the characters in the Scenes being stuck in a permanent, soulless cycle of work and partying has the effect of drawing attention to the limits of realism itself. As many scholars¹² have pointed out, realism, by replicating what already exists, fails to challenge dominant orthodoxies and structures (such as capitalism, sexism, racism and so on) that create social inequalities. Tempest’s Chorus, then, is not only a direct comment on the Scenes in terms of its content, but also in terms of its form: the poetic oneness of the Chorus demonstrates how life for the characters could be different from the lives portrayed in the naturalistic Scenes, if they could break out of their conditioned behaviour.