Episode 088: Roots by Arnold Wesker

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Diyan Zora

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Arnold Wesker’s quiet classic, Roots, is a story of doomed love, rural poverty and social protest, and most of all, of cultural aspiration and growing up and away from family, from one’s roots.

We recorded this episode as a sensitive revival of the play was finishing its run at the Almeida theatre in London, and I was delighted to be able to talk to its director, Diyan Zora, about Wesker’s love letter to his wife and her roots.