From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Theatre of the Absurd, or Theater of the Absurd (French: "Le Théâtre de l'Absurde") is a designation for particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work.

The term was coined by the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a 1962 book on the subject. Esslin saw the work of these playwrights as giving artistic articulation to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, and so one must find one's own meaning as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus.

The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is thought to have its origins in Dadaism, nonsense poetry and avant-garde art of the 1910s – 1920s. Despite its critics, this genre of theatre achieved popularity when World War II highlighted the essential precariousness of human life. The 'Theatre of the Absurd' is primarily existentialist. It is also often known as theatre indented to shock the audience. Most exemplary is Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a play about two bums that would have shocked the French audience, to say the least, attending the premiere performance at the Theatre de Babylone.

The expression "Theater of the Absurd" has been criticized by some writers, and one also finds the expressions "Anti-Theater" and "New Theater". According to Martin Esslin, the four defining playwrights of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov, although each of these writers has entirely unique preoccupations and techniques that go beyond the term "absurd". Other writers often associated with this group include Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Jean Tardieu. Playwrights who served as an inspiration to the movement include Alfred Jarry, Luigi Pirandello, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Guillaume Apollinaire, the surrealists and many more.

The "Absurd" or "New Theater" movement was, in its origin, a distinctly Paris-based (and Rive Gauche) avant-garde phenomenon tied to extremely small theaters in the Quartier Latin; the movement only gained international prominence over time.

In practice, The Theatre of the Absurd departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods. There is a fine line, however, between the careful and artful use of chaos and non-realistic elements and true, meaningless chaos. While many of the plays described by this title seem to be quite random and meaningless on the surface, an underlying structure and meaning is usually found in the midst of the chaos.

• Human condition is meaningless, absurd, illogical (Jacobus 1804). Humans are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe and they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate (Watt, Richardson 1154).
• Language: a character may think he understands another character, but really a third option is going on.
• Characteristics: no plot, minimal staging, babbling; abstract setting, arbitrary illogical action (Worthen 1639). That which is devoid of purpose. “It is sometimes said to express the ‘human condition’ in a basic or ‘existential’ way” (Worthen 1639).
• Pirandello was one of the first experimentalists. He wanted to bring down the fourth wall that was created by Realism and playwrights like Ibsen and Strindberg (Jacobus 920).
• Absurdism is “the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose” (Esslin 24).
• The language and poetry of Absurdist Theater emerges from concrete and objectified images of the stage (26).
• Absurdist Dramas asks its audience to “draw his own conclusions, make his own errors” (20).
• Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they have something to say and can be understood” (Esslin 21).  Most of the bewilderment absurdist drama initially created was because critics and reviewers were used to more conventional drama: realism.
• Esslin makes a distinction between the dictionary definition of absurd (“out of harmony” in the musical sense) and Drama’s understanding of the Absurd: “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose. . . . Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless” (qut. Ionesco, Esslin 23).
• “Pirandello was caught between his own sense of himself and the role he was given in this domestic tragedy” (Worthen 702).
• Six Characters, and other Pirandello plays, use “Metatheater—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly theatricalized vision of identity” (702).

• Antonin Artaud
• David Campton
• Mohit Chattopadhyay
• Edward Crothall
• Mahesh Elkunchwar
• Nikolai Erdman
• Jean Genet
• John Guare
• Tawfiq al-Hakim
• Václav Havel
• Tadeusz Kantor
• Charles Ludlam
• Wajdi Mouawad
• Sławomir Mrożek
• José de Almada Negreiros
• Yordan Radichkov
• Tadeusz Różewicz
• Sam Shepard
• N.F. Simpson
• Lauran Trao
• Matei Visniec
• Roger Vitrac
• Romain Weingarten
• Walter Wykes

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: article

• Esslin, Martin (1961). The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 
• Esslin, Martin (1965). Absurd Drama. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin. 
• Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2005.
• Watt, Stephen and Gary A. Richardson. American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary. Boston: Thompson, 2003.
• Worthen, W. B. ed. The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama. 5th ed. Boston: Thompson, 2007.