Theatre of the Absurd
Encyclopedia
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays
of absurdist fiction
, written by a number of primarily European playwright
s in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed the belief that, in a godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.
Critic Martin Esslin
coined the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his 1960 essay and, later, book of the same name. He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus
uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus
". The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville
, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play
".
Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett
, Eugène Ionesco
, Jean Genet
, Harold Pinter
, Tom Stoppard
, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
, Fernando Arrabal
, and Edward Albee
.
, who made it the title of a book on the subject first published in 1961 and in two later revised editions; the third and final edition appeared in 2004 (in paperback with a new foreword by the author). In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin saw the work of these playwrights as giving artistic meaning to Albert Camus
' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus
. In the first (1961) edition, Esslin presented the four defining playwrights of the movement as Samuel Beckett
, Arthur Adamov
, Eugène Ionesco
, and Jean Genet
, and in subsequent editions he added a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter
–although each of these writers has unique preoccupations and characteristics that go beyond the term "absurd." Other writers associated with this group by Esslin and other critics include Tom Stoppard
, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
, Fernando Arrabal
, Edward Albee
, Boris Vian
, and Jean Tardieu
.
. As Nell says in Endgame, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness ... it's the most comical thing in the world". Esslin cites William Shakespeare
as an influence on this aspect of the "Absurd drama." Shakespeare's influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbeth
and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre", "Comedy alone is suitable for us ... But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of which the tragic arises."
Though layered with a significant amount of tragedy, the Theatre of the Absurd echoes other great forms of comedic performance, according to Esslin, from Commedia dell'arte
to Vaudeville
. Similarly, Esslin cites early film comedians and music hall
artists such as Charlie Chaplin
, The Keystone Cops and Buster Keaton
as direct influences (Keaton even starred in Beckett's Film
in 1965).
or Edward Lear
; Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz; the Russians Daniil Kharms
, Nikolai Erdman
, and others; Bertolt Brecht
's distancing techniques in his "Epic theatre
"; and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg
.
One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello
, especially Six Characters in Search of an Author
. Pirandello was a highly regarded theatrical experimentalist who wanted to bring down the fourth wall
presupposed by the realism of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen
. According to W. B. Worthen, Six Characters and other Pirandello plays use "Metatheatre
—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly-theatricalized vision of identity".
Another influential playwright was Guillaume Apollinaire
whose The Breasts of Tiresias
was the first work to be called "surreal
".
whose wild, irreverent, and lascivious Ubu plays scandalized Paris in the 1890s. Likewise, the concept of 'Pataphysics–"the science of imaginary solutions"–first presented in Jarry's Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician
) was inspirational to many later Absurdists, some of whom joined the Collège de 'pataphysique, founded in honor of Jarry in 1948 (Ionesco, Arrabal, and Vian were given the title Transcendent Satrape of the Collège de 'pataphysique). The Alfred Jarry Theatre, founded by Antonin Artaud
and Roger Vitrac
, housed several Absurdist plays, including ones by Ionesco and Adamov.
Artaud's "The Theatre of Cruelty
" (presented in The Theatre and Its Double
) was a particularly important philosophical treatise. Artaud claimed theatre's reliance on literature was inadequate and that the true power of theatre was in its visceral impact. Artaud was a Surrealist
, and many other members of the Surrealist group were significant influences on the Absurdists.
Absurdism is also frequently compared to Surrealism's predecessor, Dadaism (for example, the Dadaist plays by Tristan Tzara
performed at the Cabaret Voltaire
in Zürich). Many of the Absurdists had direct connections with the Dadaists and Surrealists. Ionesco, Adamov, and Arrabal for example, were friends with Surrealists still living in Paris at the time including Paul Eluard
and André Breton
, the founder of Surrealism, and Beckett translated many Surrealist poems by Breton and others from French into English.
, and Existentialism was an influential philosophy in Paris during the rise of the Theatre of the Absurd; however, to call it Existentialist theatre is problematic for many reasons. It gained this association partly because it was named (by Esslin) after the concept of "absurdism" advocated by Albert Camus
, a philosopher commonly called Existentialist though he frequently resisted that label. Absurdism is most accurately called Existentialist in the way Franz Kafka
's work is labeled Existentialist: it embodies an aspect of the philosophy though the writer may not be a committed follower. As Tom Stoppard said in an interview, "I must say I didn't know what the word 'existential' meant until it was applied to Rosencrantz. And even now existentialism is not a philosophy I find either attractive or plausible. But it's certainly true that the play can be interpreted in existential terms, as well as in other terms."
Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre
, the philosophical spokesman for Existentialism in Paris, but few Absurdists actually committed to Sartre's own Existentialist philosophy, as expressed in Being and Nothingness, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated relationship with him. Sartre praised Genet's plays, stating that for Genet "Good is only an illusion. Evil is a Nothingness which arises upon the ruins of Good".
Ionesco, however, hated Sartre bitterly. Ionesco accused Sartre of supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by Communists; he wrote Rhinoceros
as a criticism of blind conformity, whether it be to Nazism or Communism; at the end of the play, one man remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros Sartre criticized Rhinoceros by questioning: "Why is there one man who resists? At least we could learn why, but no, we learn not even that. He resists because he is there". Sartre's criticism highlights a primary difference between the Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism: The Theatre of the Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution. In a 1966 interview, Claude Bonnefoy, comparing the Absurdists to Sartre and Camus, said to Ionesco, "It seems to me that Beckett, Adamov and yourself started out less from philosophical reflections or a return to classical sources, than from first-hand experience and a desire to find a new theatrical expression that would enable you to render this experience in all its acuteness and also its immediacy. If Sartre and Camus thought out these themes, you expressed them in a far more vital contemporary fashion". Ionesco replied, "I have the feeling that these writers – who are serious and important -- were talking about absurdity and death, but that they never really lived these themes, that they did not feel them within themselves in an almost irrational, visceral way, that all this was not deeply inscribed in their language. With them it was still rhetoric, eloquence. With Adamov and Beckett it really is a very naked reality that is conveyed through the apparent dislocation of language".
In comparison to Sartre's concepts of the function of literature, Samuel Beckett
's primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome "absurdity"; as James Knowlson says in Damned to Fame, Beckett's work focuses "on poverty, failure, exile and loss — as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er' ." Beckett's own relationship with Sartre was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his stories in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes
. Beckett said, though he liked Nausea, he generally found the writing style of Sartre and Heidegger
to be "too philosophical" and he considered himself "not a philosopher".
) avant-garde phenomenon tied to extremely small theaters in the Quartier Latin. Some of the Absurdists were born in France such as Jean Genet
, Jean Tardieu
, and Boris Vian
. Many other Absurdists were born elsewhere but lived in France, writing often in French: Samuel Beckett
from Ireland; Eugène Ionesco
from Romania
; Arthur Adamov
from Russia; and Fernando Arrabal
from Spain. As the influence of the Absurdists grew, the style spread to other countries–with playwrights either directly influenced by Absurdists in Paris or playwrights labeled Absurdist by critics. In England some of whom Esslin considered practitioners of "the Theatre of the Absurd" include: Harold Pinter
, Tom Stoppard
, N. F. Simpson
, James Saunders, and David Campton
; in the United States, Edward Albee
, Sam Shepard
, Jack Gelber
, and John Guare
; in Poland
, Tadeusz Różewicz
, Sławomir Mrożek, and Tadeusz Kantor
; in Italy, Dino Buzzati
; and in Germany, Peter Weiss
, Wolfgang Hildesheimer
, and Günter Grass
. In India, both Mohit Chattopadhyay
and Mahesh Elkunchwar
have also been labeled Absurdists. Other international Absurdist playwrights include: Tawfiq el-Hakim from Egypt
; Hanoch Levin
from Israel; Miguel Mihura
from Spain; José de Almada Negreiros from Portugal; Mikhail Volokhov from Russia; Yordan Radichkov
from Bulgaria
; and playwright and former Czech President Václav Havel
, and others from the Czech Republic
and Slovakia
.
or experimental playwrights like Suzan-Lori Parks
–in The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World
and The America Play
, for example–to relatively realistic playwrights like David Mamet
–in Glengarry Glen Ross
, which Mamet dedicated to Harold Pinter
. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh
in plays such as Pillowman addresses some of the themes and uses some of the techniques of Absurdism, especially reminiscent of Beckett and Pinter.
"uber-marrionettes"). Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal
, or flat character types as in Commedia dell'arte
.
The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible. Many of Pinter's plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by some force the character can't understand. Pinter's first play was The Room
– in which the main character, Rose, is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of menace remains a mystery – and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside force is repeated in many of his later works (perhaps most famously in The Birthday Party
). In Friedrich Dürrenmatt
's The Visit the main character, Alfred, is menaced by Claire Zachanassian; Claire, richest woman in the world with a decaying body and multiple husbands throughout the play, has guaranteed a payout for anyone in the town willing to kill Alfred. Characters in Absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco's recurring character Berenger, for example, faces a killer without motivation in The Killer
, and Berenger's logical arguments fail to convince the killer that killing is wrong. In Rhinocéros
, Berenger remains the only human on Earth who hasn’t turned into a rhinoceros and must decide whether or not to conform. Characters may find themselves trapped in a routine or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular characters in Tom Stoppard
's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
, for example, find themselves in a story (Hamlet
) in which the outcome has already been written.
The plots of many Absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. Some Beckett scholars call this the "pseudocouple". The two characters may be roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence (like Vladamir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot
or the two main characters in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
); one character may be clearly dominant and may torture the passive character (like Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot
or Hamm and Clov in Endgame
); the relationship of the characters may shift dramatically throughout the play (as in Ionesco's The Lesson
or in many of Albee's plays, The Zoo Story
for example).
, for example, in the series of short pieces Theatre de Chambre arranged the language as one arranges music. Distinctively Absurdist language will range from meaningless clichés to Vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense. The Bald Soprano, for example, was inspired by a language book in which characters would exchange empty clichés that never ultimately amounted to true communication or true connection. Likewise, the characters in The Bald Soprano–like many other Absurdist characters–go through routine dialogue full of clichés without actually communicating anything substantive or making a human connection. In other cases, the dialogue is purposefully elliptical; the language of Absurdist Theater becomes secondary to the poetry of the concrete and objectified images of the stage. Many of Beckett's plays devalue language for the sake of the striking tableau. Harold Pinter–famous for his "Pinter pause"–presents more subtly elliptical dialogue; often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes. The following exchange between Aston and Davies in The Caretaker
is typical of Pinter:
Much of the dialogue in Absurdist drama (especially in Beckett's and Albee's plays, for example) reflects this kind of evasiveness and inability to make a connection. When language that is apparently nonsensical appears, it also demonstrates this disconnection. It can be used for comic effect, as in Lucky's long speech in Godot when Pozzo says Lucky is demonstrating a talent for "thinking" as other characters comically attempt to stop him:
Nonsense may also be used abusively, as in Pinter's The Birthday Party
when Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley with apparently nonsensical questions and non-sequiturs:
As in the above examples, nonsense in Absurdist theatre may be also used to demonstrate the limits of language while questioning or parodying the determinism of science and the knowability of truth. In Ionesco's The Lesson, a professor tries to force a pupil to understand his nonsensical philology lesson:
. Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery; in The Birthday Party, for example, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at the end, but it is never revealed why. In later Pinter plays, such as The Caretaker and The Homecoming, the menace is no longer entering from the outside but exists within the confined space. Other Absurdists use this kind of plot, as in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance: Harry and Edna take refuge at the home of their friends Agnes and Tobias because they suddenly become frightened. They have difficulty explaining what has frightened them:L
Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in many Absurdist plots: for example, in The Chairs an old couple welcomes a large number of guests to their home, but these guests are invisible so all we see is empty chairs, a representation of their absence. Likewise, the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. In many of Beckett's later plays, most features are stripped away and what's left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls
, for example, or in Breath
only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.
The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in Ionesco's Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It
, a couple must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it's continually growing, but the corpse ultimately – and, again, without explanation – floats away. In Jean Tardieu's "The Keyhole" a lover watches a woman through a keyhole as she removes her clothes and then her flesh.
Like Pirandello, many Absurdists use meta-theatrical techniques to explore role fulfillment, fate, and the theatricality of theatre. This is true for many of Genet's plays: for example, in The Maids, two maids pretend to be their masters; in The Balcony brothel patrons take on elevated positions in role-playing games, but the line between theatre and reality starts to blur. Another complex example of this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: it's a play about two minor characters in Hamlet
; these characters, in turn, have various encounters with the players who perform The Mousetrap, the play-with-in-the-play in Hamlet. In Stoppard's Travesties, James Joyce and Tristin Tzara slip in and out of the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest.
Plots are frequently cyclical: for example, Endgame begins where the play ended – at the beginning of the play, Clov says, "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished" – and themes of cycle, routine, and repetition are explored throughout.
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
of absurdist fiction
Absurdist fiction
Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events...
, written by a number of primarily European playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
s in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed the belief that, in a godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.
Critic Martin Esslin
Martin Esslin
Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...
coined the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his 1960 essay and, later, book of the same name. He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955....
". The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play
Well-made play
The well-made play is a genre of drama from the 19th century that Eugène Scribe first codified and that Victorien Sardou developed. By the mid-19th century, it had entered into common use as a derogatory term...
".
Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
, Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...
, Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
, and Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
.
Origin
The term was coined by the critic Martin EsslinMartin Esslin
Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...
, who made it the title of a book on the subject first published in 1961 and in two later revised editions; the third and final edition appeared in 2004 (in paperback with a new foreword by the author). In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin saw the work of these playwrights as giving artistic meaning to Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955....
. In the first (1961) edition, Esslin presented the four defining playwrights of the movement as Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov was a playwright, one of the foremost exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd.Adamov was born in Kislovodsk in Russia to a wealthy Armenian family, which lost its wealth in 1917...
, Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
, and Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, and in subsequent editions he added a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
–although each of these writers has unique preoccupations and characteristics that go beyond the term "absurd." Other writers associated with this group by Esslin and other critics include Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...
, Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
, Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, Boris Vian
Boris Vian
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
, and Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...
.
Significant precursors
Though the label "Theatre of the Absurd" covers a wide variety of playwrights with differing styles, they do have some common stylistic precursors (Esslin [1961]).Elizabethan - Tragicomedy
The mode of most "absurdist" plays is tragicomedyTragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
. As Nell says in Endgame, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness ... it's the most comical thing in the world". Esslin cites William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
as an influence on this aspect of the "Absurd drama." Shakespeare's influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre", "Comedy alone is suitable for us ... But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of which the tragic arises."
Though layered with a significant amount of tragedy, the Theatre of the Absurd echoes other great forms of comedic performance, according to Esslin, from Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
to Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
. Similarly, Esslin cites early film comedians and music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
artists such as Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, The Keystone Cops and Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
as direct influences (Keaton even starred in Beckett's Film
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
in 1965).
Formal experimentation
As an experimental form of theatre, Theatre of the Absurd employs techniques borrowed from earlier innovators. Writers and techniques frequently mentioned in relation to the Theatre of the Absurd include the 19th-century nonsense poets, such as Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
or Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
; Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz; the Russians Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms was an early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. One of his pseudonyms, which was signed in Latin alphabet, was Daniel Charms.- Life :...
, Nikolai Erdman
Nikolai Erdman
Nikolay Robertovich Erdman was a Soviet dramatist and screenwriter primarily remembered for his work with Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1920s. His plays, notably The Suicide , form a link in Russian literary history between the satirical drama of Nikolai Gogol and the post-World War II Theatre of the...
, and others; Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's distancing techniques in his "Epic theatre
Epic theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...
"; and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
.
One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
, especially Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...
. Pirandello was a highly regarded theatrical experimentalist who wanted to bring down the fourth wall
Fourth wall
The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...
presupposed by the realism of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
. According to W. B. Worthen, Six Characters and other Pirandello plays use "Metatheatre
Metatheatre
The term "metatheatre", coined by Lionel Abel, has entered into common critical usage; however, there is still much uncertainty over its proper definition and what dramatic techniques might be included in its scope...
—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly-theatricalized vision of identity".
Another influential playwright was Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
whose The Breasts of Tiresias
The Breasts of Tiresias
The Breasts of Tiresias is a surrealist play by Guillaume Apollinaire. Written in 1903, the play received its first production in a revised version in 1917...
was the first work to be called "surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
".
Pataphysics, Surrealism, and Dadaism
One of the most significant common precursors is Alfred JarryAlfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
whose wild, irreverent, and lascivious Ubu plays scandalized Paris in the 1890s. Likewise, the concept of 'Pataphysics–"the science of imaginary solutions"–first presented in Jarry's Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician
Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician
Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician is a novel by French surrealist author Alfred Jarry. The book was published in 1911...
) was inspirational to many later Absurdists, some of whom joined the Collège de 'pataphysique, founded in honor of Jarry in 1948 (Ionesco, Arrabal, and Vian were given the title Transcendent Satrape of the Collège de 'pataphysique). The Alfred Jarry Theatre, founded by Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
and Roger Vitrac
Roger Vitrac
Roger Vitrac was a French surrealist playwright and poet.Born in Pinsac, Roger Vitrac moved to Paris in 1910. As a young man, he was influenced by symbolism and the writings of Lautréamont and Alfred Jarry, and he developed a passion for theatre and poetry...
, housed several Absurdist plays, including ones by Ionesco and Adamov.
Artaud's "The Theatre of Cruelty
Theatre of Cruelty
The Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
" (presented in The Theatre and Its Double
Theatre and its Double
The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays by French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud and published in 1938....
) was a particularly important philosophical treatise. Artaud claimed theatre's reliance on literature was inadequate and that the true power of theatre was in its visceral impact. Artaud was a Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, and many other members of the Surrealist group were significant influences on the Absurdists.
Absurdism is also frequently compared to Surrealism's predecessor, Dadaism (for example, the Dadaist plays by Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
performed at the Cabaret Voltaire
Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich)
Cabaret Voltaire was the name of a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland. It was founded by Hugo Ball, with his companion Emmy Hennings on February 5, 1916 as a cabaret for artistic and political purposes. Other founding members were Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, and Jean Arp...
in Zürich). Many of the Absurdists had direct connections with the Dadaists and Surrealists. Ionesco, Adamov, and Arrabal for example, were friends with Surrealists still living in Paris at the time including Paul Eluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
and André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, the founder of Surrealism, and Beckett translated many Surrealist poems by Breton and others from French into English.
Relationship with Existentialism
The Theatre of the Absurd is commonly associated with ExistentialismExistentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, and Existentialism was an influential philosophy in Paris during the rise of the Theatre of the Absurd; however, to call it Existentialist theatre is problematic for many reasons. It gained this association partly because it was named (by Esslin) after the concept of "absurdism" advocated by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, a philosopher commonly called Existentialist though he frequently resisted that label. Absurdism is most accurately called Existentialist in the way Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
's work is labeled Existentialist: it embodies an aspect of the philosophy though the writer may not be a committed follower. As Tom Stoppard said in an interview, "I must say I didn't know what the word 'existential' meant until it was applied to Rosencrantz. And even now existentialism is not a philosophy I find either attractive or plausible. But it's certainly true that the play can be interpreted in existential terms, as well as in other terms."
Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, the philosophical spokesman for Existentialism in Paris, but few Absurdists actually committed to Sartre's own Existentialist philosophy, as expressed in Being and Nothingness, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated relationship with him. Sartre praised Genet's plays, stating that for Genet "Good is only an illusion. Evil is a Nothingness which arises upon the ruins of Good".
Ionesco, however, hated Sartre bitterly. Ionesco accused Sartre of supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by Communists; he wrote Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros (play)
Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
as a criticism of blind conformity, whether it be to Nazism or Communism; at the end of the play, one man remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros Sartre criticized Rhinoceros by questioning: "Why is there one man who resists? At least we could learn why, but no, we learn not even that. He resists because he is there". Sartre's criticism highlights a primary difference between the Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism: The Theatre of the Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution. In a 1966 interview, Claude Bonnefoy, comparing the Absurdists to Sartre and Camus, said to Ionesco, "It seems to me that Beckett, Adamov and yourself started out less from philosophical reflections or a return to classical sources, than from first-hand experience and a desire to find a new theatrical expression that would enable you to render this experience in all its acuteness and also its immediacy. If Sartre and Camus thought out these themes, you expressed them in a far more vital contemporary fashion". Ionesco replied, "I have the feeling that these writers – who are serious and important -- were talking about absurdity and death, but that they never really lived these themes, that they did not feel them within themselves in an almost irrational, visceral way, that all this was not deeply inscribed in their language. With them it was still rhetoric, eloquence. With Adamov and Beckett it really is a very naked reality that is conveyed through the apparent dislocation of language".
In comparison to Sartre's concepts of the function of literature, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome "absurdity"; as James Knowlson says in Damned to Fame, Beckett's work focuses "on poverty, failure, exile and loss — as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er' ." Beckett's own relationship with Sartre was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his stories in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes
Les Temps modernes
The first issue of Les Temps modernes , the most important cultural review of the period after World War II, appeared in October 1945. It was known as the review of Jean-Paul Sartre. It was named for a film by Charlie Chaplin...
. Beckett said, though he liked Nausea, he generally found the writing style of Sartre and Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
to be "too philosophical" and he considered himself "not a philosopher".
History
The "Absurd" or "New Theater" movement was originally a Paris-based (and a Rive GaucheRive Gauche
La Rive Gauche is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, cutting the city in two: looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank is to the right....
) avant-garde phenomenon tied to extremely small theaters in the Quartier Latin. Some of the Absurdists were born in France such as Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...
, and Boris Vian
Boris Vian
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
. Many other Absurdists were born elsewhere but lived in France, writing often in French: Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
from Ireland; Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
from Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
; Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov was a playwright, one of the foremost exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd.Adamov was born in Kislovodsk in Russia to a wealthy Armenian family, which lost its wealth in 1917...
from Russia; and Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
from Spain. As the influence of the Absurdists grew, the style spread to other countries–with playwrights either directly influenced by Absurdists in Paris or playwrights labeled Absurdist by critics. In England some of whom Esslin considered practitioners of "the Theatre of the Absurd" include: Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, N. F. Simpson
N. F. Simpson
Norman Frederick Simpson was an English playwright closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. To his friends he was known as Wally Simpson, in comic reference to the abdication crisis of 1936.-Early years:...
, James Saunders, and David Campton
David Campton
David Campton was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years...
; in the United States, Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
, Jack Gelber
Jack Gelber
Jack Gelber was an American playwright best known for his 1959 drama The Connection, depicting the life of drug-addicted jazz musicians. The first great success of the Living Theatre, the play was translated into five languages and produced in ten nations...
, and John Guare
John Guare
John Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body...
; in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Tadeusz Różewicz
Tadeusz Rózewicz
Tadeusz Różewicz is a Polish poet and writer.Różewicz belongs to the first generation born and educated after Poland regained its independence in 1918. His youthful poems were published in 1938...
, Sławomir Mrożek, and Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz Kantor was a Polish painter, assemblage artist, set designer and theatre director. Kantor is renowned for his revolutionary theatrical performances in Poland and abroad.- Life and career :...
; in Italy, Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.-Life:Buzzati was born at San Pellegrino,...
; and in Germany, Peter Weiss
Peter Weiss
Peter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance....
, Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Wolfgang Hildesheimer
Wolfgang Hildesheimer was a German author who incorporated the Theatre of the Absurd. He originally trained as an artist, before turning to writing.-Biography:...
, and Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
. In India, both Mohit Chattopadhyay
Mohit Chattopadhyay
Mohit Chattopadhyaya is a famous Bengali Indian Playwright, screenplay writer, dramatist & poet. He was born on 1 June 1934, in the town of Barisal, now in Bangladesh. He is a leading figure in modern Indian drama....
and Mahesh Elkunchwar
Mahesh Elkunchwar
Mahesh Elkunchwar is an Indian playwright with more than 15 plays to his name, in addition to his theoretical writings, critical works, and his active work in India's Parallel Cinema as actor and screenwriter....
have also been labeled Absurdists. Other international Absurdist playwrights include: Tawfiq el-Hakim from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
; Hanoch Levin
Hanoch Levin
Hanoch Levin , was a prominent Israeli dramatist. He was also a theater director, an author and a poet, but he is best known for his plays.- Early life :...
from Israel; Miguel Mihura
Miguel Mihura
Miguel Mihura Santos was a Spanish playwright. He is best known for his comedy Tres sombreros de copa , a work of absurd humor that predates similar works by Beckett or Ionesco and that broke with many of the previous conventions of Spanish comic theatre.Miguel Mihura was born in Madrid in 1905...
from Spain; José de Almada Negreiros from Portugal; Mikhail Volokhov from Russia; Yordan Radichkov
Yordan Radichkov
Yordan Radichkov was a famous Bulgarian writer and playwright. Some literary critics state that he is the most significant figure in Bulgarian literature in the last third of the 20th century...
from Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
; and playwright and former Czech President Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, and others from the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
.
Major productions
- Jean GenetJean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
's The MaidsThe MaidsThe Maids is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed...
(Les Bonnes) premiered in 1947. - Eugène IonescoEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
's The Bald SopranoThe Bald SopranoLa Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
(La Cantatrice Chauve) was first performed on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. Ionesco followed this with The Lesson (La Leçon) in 1951 and The Chairs (Les Chaises) in 1952. - Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's Waiting for GodotWaiting for GodotWaiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
was first performed on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. - In 1957, Genet's The BalconyThe BalconyThe Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Since Peter Zadek directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and...
(Le Balcon) was produced in London at the Arts Theatre. - That May, Harold Pinter's The Room was presented at The Drama Studio at the University of Bristol. Pinter's The Birthday PartyThe Birthday Party (play)The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
premiered in the West End in 1958. - Edward AlbeeEdward AlbeeEdward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
's The Zoo StoryThe Zoo StoryNot to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...
premiered in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt in 1959. - On the October 28 of that year, Krapp's Last TapeKrapp's Last TapeKrapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...
by Beckett was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. - Fernando ArrabalFernando ArrabalFernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
's Picnic on the Battlefield (Pique-nique en campagne) also came out in 1958. - Genet's The BlacksThe Blacks (play)The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....
(Les Nègres) was published that year but was first performed at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris on the 28 October 1959. - 1959 also saw the completion of Ionesco's RhinocerosRhinoceros (play)Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
which premiered in Paris in January 1960 at the Odeon. - Beckett's Happy DaysHappy Days (play)Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961. Beckett finished the translation into French by November 1962 but amended the title...
was first performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on 17 September 1961. - Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...
also premiered in New York the following year, on October 13. - Pinter's The HomecomingThe HomecomingThe Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...
premiered in London in June 1965 at the Aldwych Theatre. - Peter Weiss's Marat/SadeMarat/SadeThe Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...
(The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade) was first performed in West Berlin in 1964 and in New York City a year later. - Tom StoppardTom StoppardSir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are DeadRosencrantz & Guildenstern Are DeadRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. - Arrabal's Automobile Graveyard (Le Cimetière des voitures) was also first performed in 1966.
- Beckett's CatastropheCatastrophe (play)Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most...
–dedicated to then-imprisoned Czech dissident playwright Václav HavelVáclav HavelVáclav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
, who became president of CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
after the 1989 Velvet RevolutionVelvet RevolutionThe Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
–was first performed at the Avignon Festival on July 21, 1982; the film version (in Beckett on Film [2001]) was directed by David MametDavid MametDavid Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
and performed by Harold PinterHarold PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Sir John GielgudJohn GielgudSir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, and Rebecca PidgeonRebecca PidgeonRebecca Pidgeon is a British actress and singer-songwriter. She has maintained a recording career while also acting on stage and in feature films. She is married to the American writer and director David Mamet.-Early life:...
. - Zia Haider, Bangladesh
Legacy
Echoes of elements of "The Theatre of the Absurd" can be seen in many later playwrights, from more avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
or experimental playwrights like Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks is an African American playwright and screenwriter. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Topdog/Underdog.-Early years:...
–in The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World is a 1990 play by Suzan-Lori Parks.This play brings to life a menagerie of stereotypes of African Americans. The "last man" of the title is named Black Man With Watermelon. He dies multiple deaths over the course of the show...
and The America Play
The America Play
The America Play is a two-act play by Suzan-Lori Parks. It premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater in January 1994 The plot revolves around an unnamed African-American gravedigger who gains a measure of fame due to his uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln...
, for example–to relatively realistic playwrights like David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
–in Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1984 play written by David Mamet. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell...
, which Mamet dedicated to Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Although he has lived in London his entire life, he is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights.-Life:...
in plays such as Pillowman addresses some of the themes and uses some of the techniques of Absurdism, especially reminiscent of Beckett and Pinter.
Theatrical features
Plays within this group are absurd in that they focus not on logical acts, realistic occurrences, or traditional character development; they, instead, focus on human beings trapped in an incomprehensible world subject to any occurrence, no matter how illogical. The theme of incomprehensibility is coupled with the inadequacy of language to form meaningful human connections. According to Martin Esslin, Absurdism is "the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose" Absurdist drama asks its viewer to "draw his own conclusions, make his own errors". Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they have something to say and can be understood". 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".Characters
The characters in Absurdist drama are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe and they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate. Many characters appear as automatons stuck in routines speaking only in cliché (Ionesco called the Old Man and Old Woman in The ChairsLes Chaises
Les Chaises is an absurdist "tragic farce" by Eugene Ionesco. It was written in 1952 and debuted the same year.- Plot :The play concerns two characters, known as Old Man and Old Woman, frantically preparing chairs for a series of invisible guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old...
"uber-marrionettes"). Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
, or flat character types as in Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
.
The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible. Many of Pinter's plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by some force the character can't understand. Pinter's first play was The Room
The Room
The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and...
– in which the main character, Rose, is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of menace remains a mystery – and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside force is repeated in many of his later works (perhaps most famously in The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)
The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
). In Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...
's The Visit the main character, Alfred, is menaced by Claire Zachanassian; Claire, richest woman in the world with a decaying body and multiple husbands throughout the play, has guaranteed a payout for anyone in the town willing to kill Alfred. Characters in Absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco's recurring character Berenger, for example, faces a killer without motivation in The Killer
Tueur sans gages
The Killer is a play written by Eugene Ionesco in 1958. It is the first of Ionesco's Bérenger plays. The others are Rhinocéros , Exit the King , and A Stroll in the Air...
, and Berenger's logical arguments fail to convince the killer that killing is wrong. In Rhinocéros
Rhinoceros (play)
Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd...
, Berenger remains the only human on Earth who hasn’t turned into a rhinoceros and must decide whether or not to conform. Characters may find themselves trapped in a routine or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular characters in Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
, for example, find themselves in a story (Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
) in which the outcome has already been written.
The plots of many Absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. Some Beckett scholars call this the "pseudocouple". The two characters may be roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence (like Vladamir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
or the two main characters in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
); one character may be clearly dominant and may torture the passive character (like Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
or Hamm and Clov in Endgame
Endgame (play)
Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
); the relationship of the characters may shift dramatically throughout the play (as in Ionesco's The Lesson
La Leçon
The Lesson is a one-act play by Eugène Ionesco. It was first performed in 1951 in a production directed by Marcel Cuvelier . Claude Mansard played the Maid and Rosette Zuchelli played the Pupil in that production. Since 1957 it has been in permanent production at Paris' Théâtre de la Huchette, on...
or in many of Albee's plays, The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...
for example).
Language
Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in Absurdist plays is naturalistic. The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés–when words appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the characters, making the Theatre of the Absurd distinctive. Language frequently gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness. Jean TardieuJean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...
, for example, in the series of short pieces Theatre de Chambre arranged the language as one arranges music. Distinctively Absurdist language will range from meaningless clichés to Vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense. The Bald Soprano, for example, was inspired by a language book in which characters would exchange empty clichés that never ultimately amounted to true communication or true connection. Likewise, the characters in The Bald Soprano–like many other Absurdist characters–go through routine dialogue full of clichés without actually communicating anything substantive or making a human connection. In other cases, the dialogue is purposefully elliptical; the language of Absurdist Theater becomes secondary to the poetry of the concrete and objectified images of the stage. Many of Beckett's plays devalue language for the sake of the striking tableau. Harold Pinter–famous for his "Pinter pause"–presents more subtly elliptical dialogue; often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes. The following exchange between Aston and Davies in The Caretaker
The Caretaker
The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...
is typical of Pinter:
- ASTON. More or less exactly what you...
- DAVIES. That's it ... that's what I'm getting at is ... I mean, what sort of jobs ... (Pause.)
- ASTON. Well, there's things like the stairs ... and the ... the bells ...
- DAVIES. But it'd be a matter ... wouldn't it ... it'd be a matter of a broom ... isn't it?
Much of the dialogue in Absurdist drama (especially in Beckett's and Albee's plays, for example) reflects this kind of evasiveness and inability to make a connection. When language that is apparently nonsensical appears, it also demonstrates this disconnection. It can be used for comic effect, as in Lucky's long speech in Godot when Pozzo says Lucky is demonstrating a talent for "thinking" as other characters comically attempt to stop him:
- LUCKY. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment...
Nonsense may also be used abusively, as in Pinter's The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)
The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
when Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley with apparently nonsensical questions and non-sequiturs:
- GOLDBERG. What do you use for pyjamas?
- STANLEY. Nothing.
- GOLDBERG. You verminate the sheet of your birth.
- MCCANN. What about the Albigensenist heresy?
- GOLDBERG. Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?
- MCCANN. What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?
- GOLDBERG. Speak up Webber. Why did the chicken cross the road?
As in the above examples, nonsense in Absurdist theatre may be also used to demonstrate the limits of language while questioning or parodying the determinism of science and the knowability of truth. In Ionesco's The Lesson, a professor tries to force a pupil to understand his nonsensical philology lesson:
- PROFESSOR. ... In Spanish: the roses of my grandmother are as yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic; in Latin: the roses of my grandmother are as yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic. Do you detect the difference? Translate this into ... Romanian
- PUPIL. The ... how do you say "roses" in Romanian?
- PROFESSOR. But "roses", what else? ... "roses" is a translation in Oriental of the French word "roses", in Spanish "roses", do you get it? In Sardanapali, "roses"...
Plot
Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in The Theatre of the Absurd. Plots can consist of the absurd repetition of cliché and routine, as in Godot or The Bald SopranoThe Bald Soprano
La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
. Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery; in The Birthday Party, for example, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at the end, but it is never revealed why. In later Pinter plays, such as The Caretaker and The Homecoming, the menace is no longer entering from the outside but exists within the confined space. Other Absurdists use this kind of plot, as in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance: Harry and Edna take refuge at the home of their friends Agnes and Tobias because they suddenly become frightened. They have difficulty explaining what has frightened them:L
- HARRY: There was nothing ... but we were very scared.
- EDNA: We ... were ... terrified.
- HARRY: We were scared. It was like being lost: very young again, with the dark, and lost. There was no ... thing ... to be ... frightened of, but ...
- EDNA: WE WERE FRIGHTENED ... AND THERE WAS NOTHING.
Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in many Absurdist plots: for example, in The Chairs an old couple welcomes a large number of guests to their home, but these guests are invisible so all we see is empty chairs, a representation of their absence. Likewise, the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. In many of Beckett's later plays, most features are stripped away and what's left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls
Footfalls
Footfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played...
, for example, or in Breath
Breath (play)
Breath is a notably short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue Oh! Calcutta!, at the Eden Theatre in New York City on June 16, 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of...
only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.
The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in Ionesco's Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It
Amédée ou comment s'en débarrasser
Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It , is a play written by Eugene Ionesco based on his earlier short story entitled "Oriflamme". It is about a playwright named Amédée and his wife Madeleine, a switch board operator. They discuss how to deal with a corpse in the other room that's continually growing...
, a couple must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it's continually growing, but the corpse ultimately – and, again, without explanation – floats away. In Jean Tardieu's "The Keyhole" a lover watches a woman through a keyhole as she removes her clothes and then her flesh.
Like Pirandello, many Absurdists use meta-theatrical techniques to explore role fulfillment, fate, and the theatricality of theatre. This is true for many of Genet's plays: for example, in The Maids, two maids pretend to be their masters; in The Balcony brothel patrons take on elevated positions in role-playing games, but the line between theatre and reality starts to blur. Another complex example of this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: it's a play about two minor characters in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
; these characters, in turn, have various encounters with the players who perform The Mousetrap, the play-with-in-the-play in Hamlet. In Stoppard's Travesties, James Joyce and Tristin Tzara slip in and out of the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest.
Plots are frequently cyclical: for example, Endgame begins where the play ended – at the beginning of the play, Clov says, "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished" – and themes of cycle, routine, and repetition are explored throughout.
See also
- Charles LudlamCharles LudlamCharles Braun Ludlam was an American actor, director, and playwright.-Early life:Ludlam was born in Floral Park, New York, the son of Marjorie and Joseph William Ludlam. He was raised in Greenlawn, New York, on Long Island, and attended Harborfields High School. The fact that he was gay was not a...
- Miguel MihuraMiguel MihuraMiguel Mihura Santos was a Spanish playwright. He is best known for his comedy Tres sombreros de copa , a work of absurd humor that predates similar works by Beckett or Ionesco and that broke with many of the previous conventions of Spanish comic theatre.Miguel Mihura was born in Madrid in 1905...
- Wajdi MouawadWajdi MouawadWajdi Mouawad, OC is a Canadian writer, actor and director born in Lebanon in 1968. After living in France for a short time, he moved to Quebec in 1983.- Biography :He obtained his diploma from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1991....
- Lauran TraoLauran TraoLauran Trao is a Tai, Viet, and French expert on literary devices. She was born in 1907 in Switzerland.She was majorly influenced by her English professor Wade Varieur from Johnson University. She lived most of her life in rural Russia along with her younger Korean half-sister, Eugenie Kim. Her...
- Walter WykesWalter WykesWalter Wykes is an American playwright and actor. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he has had over thirty plays produced across the United States and internationally...
- Eugène IonescoEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
- Mikhail Volokhov
- Duck AmuckDuck AmuckDuck Amuck is a surreal animated cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons. The short was released in early 1953 by The Vitaphone Corporation, the short subject division of Warner Bros. Pictures, as part of the Merrie Melodies series...
, a 1953 Warner Bros. cartoon, features many of the tenets of Theatre of the Absurd.
Works cited
- Artaud, AntoninAntonin ArtaudAntoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
. The Theatre and Its Double. Tr. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958. - Esslin, MartinMartin EsslinMartin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...
. Absurd Drama. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1965. - –––. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961.
- –––. The Theatre of the Absurd. 3rd ed. With a new foreword by the author. New York: Vintage (Knopf), 2004. ISBN 9781400075232 (13).
- Jacobus, Lee A. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2005.
- Ionesco, EugèneEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
. Fragments of a Journal. Tr. Jean Stewart. London: Faber and Faber, 1968. - Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove P, 1996.
- Sartre, Jean-PaulJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
. "Beyond Bourgeois Theatre", Tulane Drama Review 5.3 (Mar. 1961): 6. - –––. "Introduction". The MaidsThe MaidsThe Maids is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed...
and DeathwatchDeathwatch (play)Deathwatch is a play written by Jean Genet in 1947, performed for the first time in Paris at the Théâtre des Mathurins in February 1949 under the direction of Jean Marchat.-Plot:...
, by Jean GenetJean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
. Tr. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Grove P, 1954. - Watt, Stephen and Gary A. Richardson, eds. American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary. Boston: Thompson, 2003.
- Worthen, W. B., ed. The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama. 5th ed. Boston: Thompson, 2007.
Further reading
- Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski, ed. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove P, 2004.
- Baker, William, and John C. Ross, comp. Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History. London: The British LibraryBritish LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
and New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll P, 2005. ISBN 1584561564 (10). ISBN 9781584561569 (13). - Bennett, Michael Y. Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ISBN 978-0-230-11338-1
- Brook, Peter. The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. Touchstone, 1995. ISBN 0684829576 (10).
- Caselli, Daniela. Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism. ISBN 0-7190-7156-9.
- Cronin, Anthony. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. New York: Da Capo P, 1997.
- Gaensbauer, Deborah B. Eugène Ionesco Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996.
- Lewis, Allan. Ionesco. New York: Twayne, 1972.
- McMahon, Joseph H. The Imagination of Jean Genet. New Haven: Yale UP, 1963.
- Driver, Tom Faw. Jean Genet. New York: Columbia UP, 1966.
- Mercier, Vivian. Beckett/Beckett. Oxford UP, 1977. ISBN 0-19-281269-6.
- La Nouvelle Critique, numéro spécial Arthur Adamov, août-septembre 1973.
- Jacqueline Adamov, Censure et représentation dans le théâtre d’Arthur Adamov, in P. Vernois (Textes recueillis et présentés par), L’Onirisme et l’insolite dans le théâtre français contemporain. Actes du colloque de Strasbourg, Paris, Editions Klincksieck, 1974.