Loot Context Essays

Loot Context Essays Loot Context Essay Loot Context Essay Joe Orton was the son of a gardener and a mechanist, he had an ordinary schooling in Leicester, where he was born, and started working at the age of 16. For 2 years he got often sacked from his employers since what he did didnt interest him. At night he was member of many different amateur dramatic societies, what inspired him to become a professional actor. With the help of private tutition, he managed to get into R.A.D.A. He claims not to have learnt anything for the first year, but he says that he had lost his confidence. When he went into Rep he got married to one of the other students he got married to one of the other students, but of course, this rushed relationship soon came to an end. Soon enough after that, Orton started to express his homosexuality, getting involved in a relationship with another of his classmates, this time, his name was Kenneth. This personal experience reflects on his writing of the play Loot, where he shows disrespect to marriag e and relationships (in real life, Orton often cheated on Kenneth, by cottaging). His can be clearly seen in the first scene, where Fay asks McLeavy, right after Mrs Mc Leavys death, if he has considered a second marriage yet? Kenneth and Orton have experienced 3 months of jail during their relationship, after they had been sentenced for vandalising the covers of public library books. During this 3-month period, he has been overcome with this feeling of disrespect for the police force and in the play Loot, especially; he shows this feeling and uses Trustcott to undermine the police authorities. Joe Orton was influenced by other plays, before he introduced his contemporary works. One of these plays might be Look back in Anger by John Osborne. This play marked the start of a new genre on the British stage in the late 1950s. It was the first play where some views and opinions, which before had been considered inappropriate, had now been expressed to a large public. Its lines are for the first time very similar to the every-day spoken language, and the bluntness of the speeches would have been quite shocking for the society at the time. For example, Jimmy, one of the main characters, says to Alison (his wife) If only something- something could happen to you, and wake you out of your beauty sleep! If you could have a child, and it would die. This play was written in the sixties, a period of time where people wanted to liberate society from the post-war tranquillity mood that had settled in the UK after WW2. The sixties were a time of change. New music bands were influencing the new era, but not only that: the first man on the moon, new daring movie stars such of marilyn monroe, and the womens liberation movement starting to expand, with the publishing of The feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.