Introduction
Theater of the Absurd came about as a reaction to World War
II. It took the basis of existential philosophy and combined it with
dramatic elements to create a style of theatre which presented a world which
can not be logically explained, life is in one word, ABSURD!
Needless to say, this genre of theatre took quite some time to
catch on because it used techniques that seemed to be illogical to the theatre
world. The plots often deviated from the more traditional episodic
structure, and seem to move in a circle, ending the same way it began.
The scenery was often unrecognizable, and to make matters worse, the dialogue
never seemed to make any sense.
As a term :
The “Theare of the Absurd” is a term coined by Hungarian-born
critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of his 1962 book on the
subject. The term refers to a particular type of play which first became
popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which presented on stage the philosophy
articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in
which he defines the human condition as basically meaningless. Camus argued
that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying
rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the
world must ultimately be seen as absurd.
Esslin regarded the term “Theatre of the Absurd” merely as a
"device" by which he meant to bring attention to certain fundamental
traits discernible in the works of a range of playwrights. The playwrights
loosely grouped under the label of the absurd attempt to convey their sense of
bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe.
According to Esslin, the five defining playwrights of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, although these writers were not always
comfortable with the label and sometimes preferred to use terms such as
"Anti-Theater" or "New Theater". Other playwrights
associated with this type of theatre include Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, N.F. Simpson, Boris Vian, Peter Weiss, Vaclav Havel, and Jean Tardieu.
Although the Theatre of the Absurd is often traced back to
avant-garde experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, its roots, in actuality, date
back much further. Absurd elements first made their appearance shortly after
the rise of Greek drama, in the wild humor and buffoonery of Old Comedy and the
plays of Aristophanes in particular. They were further developed in
the late classical period by Lucian, Petronius and Apuleius, in Menippean
satire, a tradition of carnivalistic literature, depicting “a world upside
down.” The morality plays of the Middle Ages may be considered a precursor to
the Theatre of the Absurd, depicting everyman-type characters dealing with
allegorical and sometimes existential problems. This tradition would carry over
into the Baroque allegorical drama of Elizabethan times, when dramatists such
as John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Jakob Biederman and Calderon would depict the world in mythological
archetypes. During the nineteenth century, absurd elements may be noted in
certain plays by Ibsen and, more obviously, Strindberg, but the acknowledged predecessor of what would
come to be called the Theatre of the Absurd is Alfred Jarry's "monstrous puppet-play" Ubu Roi
(1896) which presents a mythical, grotesque figure, set amidst a world of
archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal
nature of man and his cruelty. In the 1920s and 1930s, the surrealists expanded
on Jarry’s experiments, basing much of their artistic theory on the teachings
of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious mind which they
acknowledged as a great, positive healing force. Their intention was to do away
with art as a mere imitation of surface reality, instead demanding that it
should be more real than reality and deal with essences rather than
appearances. The Theatre of the Absurd was also anticipated in the dream novels
of James Joyce and Franz Kafka who created archetypes by delving into their own
subconscious and exploring the universal, collective significance of their own
private obsessions. Silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal
nonsense in the early sound films of Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the
Marx Brothers would also contribute to the development of the Theatre of the
Absurd, as did the verbal "nonsense" of François Rabelais, Lewis
Carroll, Edward Lear, and Christian Morgernstern. But it would take a
catastrophic world event to actually bring about the birth of the new movement.
World War II was the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of
the Absurd to life. The global nature of this conflict and the resulting trauma
of living under threat of nuclear annihilation put into stark perspective the
essential precariousness of human life. Suddenly, one did not need to be an
abstract thinker in order to be able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience
of absurdity became part of the average person's daily existence. During this
period, a “prophet” of the absurd appeared. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) rejected realism in the theatre,
calling for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest
conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce
collective archetypes and create a modern mythology. It was no longer possible,
he insisted, to keep using traditional art forms and standards that had ceased
being convincing and lost their validity. Although he would not live to see its
development, The Theatre of the Absurd is precisely the new theatre that Artaud
was dreaming of. It openly rebelled against conventional theatre. It was, as
Ionesco called it “anti-theatre”. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and
plotless. The dialogue often seemed to be complete gibberish. And, not
surprisingly, the public’s first reaction to this new theatre was
incomprehension and rejection.
The most famous, and most controversial, absurdist play is
probably Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The characters of the play are strange
caricatures who have difficulty communicating the simplest of concepts to one
another as they bide their time awaiting the arrival of Godot. The language
they use is often ludicrous, and following the cyclical patter, the play seems
to end in precisely the same condition it began, with no real change having
occurred. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as “the play where nothing
happens.” Its detractors count this a fatal flaw and often turn red in the face
fomenting on its inadequacies. It is mere gibberish, they cry, eyes nearly
bulging out of their head--a prank on the audience disguised as a play. The
plays supporters, on the other hand, describe it is an accurate parable on the
human condition in which “the more things change, the more they are the same.”
Change, they argue, is only an illusion. In 1955, the famous character actor
Robert Morley predicted that the success of Waiting for Godot meant “the end of
theatre as we know it.” His generation may have gloomily accepted this
prediction, but the younger generation embraced it. They were ready for
something new—something that would move beyond the old stereotypes and reflect
their increasingly complex understanding of existence.
Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic
representation of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a
ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to
the world of dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's fundamental
bewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answers to
the basic existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why
there is injustice and suffering. Ionesco defined the absurdist everyman as
“Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots … lost; all
his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” The Theatre of the Absurd, in a
sense, attempts to reestablish man’s communion with the universe. Dr. Jan Culik
writes, “Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of
myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of
his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and
primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out
of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt
that there is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human
condition.”
One of the most important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust
of language as a means of communication. Language, it seems to say, has become
nothing but a vehicle for conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges.
Dr. Culik explains, “Words failed to express the essence of human experience,
not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd
constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very
unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised
speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and
breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns,
the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of
going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically.”
Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the
logically impossible. According to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom
we can enjoy when we are able to abandon the straitjacket of logic. As Dr.
Culik points out, “Rationalist thought, like language, only deals with the
superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse
of the infinite.”
What, then, has become of this wonderful new theatre—this movement
that produced some of the most exciting and original dramatic works of the
twentieth century? Conventional wisdom, perhaps, suggests that the Theatre of
the Absurd was a product of a very specific point in time and, because that
time has passed, it has gone the way of the dinosaur. In a revised edition of
his seminal work, Martin Esslin disagrees: “Every artistic movement or style
has at one time or another been the prevailing fashion. It if was no more than
that, it disappeared without a trace. If it had a genuine content, if it
contributed to an enlargement of human perception, if it created new modes of
human expression, if it opened up new areas of experience, however, it was
bound to be absorbed into the main stream of development. And this is what
happened with the Theatre of the Absurd which, apart from having been in
fashion, undoubtedly was a genuine contribution to the permanent vocabulary of
dramatic expression…. [it] is being absorbed into the mainstream of the
tradition from which … it had never been entirely absent … The playwrights of
the post-Absurdist era have at their disposal, then, a uniquely enriched
vocabulary of dramatic technique. They can use these devices freely, separately
and in infinite variety of combinations with those bequeathed to them by other
dramatic conventions of the past.” In a New York Times piece entitled “Which
Theatre is the Absurd One?”, Edward Albee agrees with Esslin’s final analysis,
writing, “For just as it is true that our response to color and form was forever
altered once the impressionist painters put their minds to canvas, it is just
as true that the playwrights of The Theatre of the Absurd have forever altered
our response to the theatre.”
ABSURDIST PLAYWRIGHTS
SAMUEL BECKETT:
Samuel Beckett is probably the most well known
of the absurdist playwrights because of his work Waiting for Godot.
Beckett's plays seem to focus on the themes of the uselessness of human action,
and the failure of the human race to communicate. He was born on April
13,1906, which was both Friday the 13th and Good Friday. He had quite a
normal upbringing in an upper-middle-class Irish family, and excelled in both
school and the sport of cricket. He attended the University of Dublin
Ireland where he received his M.A. in modern languages, he then taught for a
short time, explored parts of Europe and eventually settled in Paris. It
was in Paris that he met writer James Joyce. It was this literary
exposure that encouraged Beckett to seek publication. It is interesting
to note that many of the conversations between Beckett and Joyce were
conducted in silence. In the 1930's and 40's Beckett published many works
in the form of essays, short stories, poetry, and novels, but very few people
noticed his work. In fact he only sold ninety-five copies of the French
translation of his novel Murphy, in four years. His postwar era fame only
came about in the 1950's when he published three novels and his famous play,
Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot is probably the most famous absurd play to
date. The characters of the play, are absurd caricatures who of course
have problems communicating with one another, and the language they use is
often times ludicrous. And, following the cyclical pattern, the play
seems to end in the same state it began in, with nothing really changed.
Follow this link for more information on Samuel Beckett.
EUGENE IONESCO:
"The universe seems to me infinitely strange and
foreign. At such a moment I gaze upon it with a mixture of anguish and
euphoria; separate from the universe, as though placed at a certain distance
outside it; I look and see pictures, creatures that move in a kind of
timeless time and spaceless space emitting sounds that are a kind of language I
no longer understand or ever register."
Along side Beckett in
the theatre genre of absurdity, is playwright Eugene Ionesco. Ionesco's
main focus is on the futility of communication, so the language of his plays
often reflects this by being almost completely nonsensical. He approaches
the absurdity of life by making his characters comical and unable to control
their own existence. Ionesco was born in Romania, but grew up in Paris
with his mother. After thirteen years in Paris, he returned to Romania
where he had to learn his native language. He attended the University of
Bucharest, then taught high school French, then in 1936 got married. It
was completely by accident that Ionesco became a playwright, while learning to
speak the English language, he took the illogical phrases he found in the
primer he was using and these phrases became the dialogue for The Bald Soprano,
his first play. It is a little strange to think that Ionesco found his
calling in playwrighting because at the time, he was known to dislike theatre
because of the contradiction presented by the reality of the performers and the
fiction of the stage. After The Bald Soprano, Ionesco went on to write
other absurd works such as Rhinoceros in 1959, and Journeys to the Home of the
Dead in 1981.
Find EugenIonesco interesting? Just follow this link.
HAROLD PINTER:
Although Samuel Beckett
and Eugene Ionesco are two of the most famous absurdist playwrights, Harold
Pinter is now the leading English language playwright in the genre. In
his plays, Pinter never finds in necessary to explain why things occur or who
anyone is, the existence within the play itself is justification enough.
In general, lack of explanation is what characterizes Pinter's work, that and
the interruption of outside forces upon a stable environment. What seems
to set him apart though is that unlike Beckett and Ionesco, Pinter's world
within the drama seems to be at least somewhat realistic. Pinter started
out in the theatre world as an actor, he attended both the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, then found a
professional acting career under the stage name David Baron. He remained
an actor until he mentioned and idea he had for a play to a friend at Bristol
University. His friend became interested in the idea and requested a
script within a week. Pinter laughed at the idea, but within the week
presented his friend with the script for The Room, which was then performed in
May 1957. Pinter's career as a playwright continued on with such works as
The Dumbwaiter in 1957, and Mountain Language in 1988. Pinter is still
going strong in English theatre where he continues to write, direct and act.
THE THEATRE OF THE
ABSURD
THE WEST AND THE EAST
I. The West
'The Theatre of the
Absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number
of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. The term is derived from
an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus. In his 'Myth of Sisyphus',
written in 1942, he first defined the human situation as basically meaningless
and absurd. The 'absurd' plays by Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene
Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others all share the view that man is
inhabiting a universe with which he is out of key. Its meaning is
indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered,
troubled and obscurely threatened.
The origins of the
Theatre of the Absurd are rooted in the avant-garde experiments in art of the
1920s and 1930s. At the same time, it was undoubtedly strongly influenced by
the traumatic experience of the horrors of the Second World War, which showed
the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and
highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental
meaninglessness and arbitrariness. The trauma of living from 1945 under threat
of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise
of the new theatre.
At the same time, the
Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the disappearance
of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be
seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by
making man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in
him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd
Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has
become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical
experience in confronting the limits of human condition.
As a result, absurd
plays assumed a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle the
viewer, shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday
concerns. In the meaningless and Godless post-Second-World-War world, it was no
longer possible to keep using such traditional art forms and standards that had
ceased being convincing and lost their validity. The Theatre of the Absurd
openly rebelled against conventional theatre. Indeed, it was anti-theatre. It
was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue seemed total
gobbledygook. Not unexpectedly, the Theatre of the Absurd first met with
incomprehension and rejection.
One of the most
important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of
communication. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalised, stereotyped,
meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience,
not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd
constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very
unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses
conventionalised speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which is
distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped
speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the
possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more
authentically. Conventionalised speech acts as a barrier between ourselves and
what the world is really about: in order to come into direct contact with
natural reality, it is necessary to discredit and discard the false crutches of
conventionalised language. Objects are much more important than language in
absurd theatre: what happens transcends what is being said about it. It is the
hidden, implied meaning of words that assume primary importance in absurd
theatre, over an above what is being actually said. The Theatre of the Absurd
strove to communicate an undissolved totality of perception - hence it had to
go beyond language.
Absurd drama subverts
logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According to
Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to
abandon the straitjacket of logic. In trying to burst the bounds of logic and
language the absurd theatre is trying to shatter the enclosing walls of the
human condition itself. Our individual identity is defined by language, having
a name is the source of our separateness - the loss of logical language brings
us towards a unity with living things. In being illogical, the absurd theatre
is anti-rationalist: it negates rationalism because it feels that rationalist
thought, like language, only deals with the superficial aspects of things.
Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the infinite. It offers
intoxicating freedom, brings one into contact with the essence of life and is a
source of marvellous comedy.
There is no dramatic
conflict in the absurd plays. Dramatic conflicts, clashes of personalities and
powers belong to a world where a rigid, accepted hierarchy of values forms a
permanent establishment. Such conflicts, however, lose their meaning in a
situation where the establishment and outward reality have become meaningless.
However frantically characters perform, this only underlines the fact that
nothing happens to change their existence. Absurd dramas are lyrical
statements, very much like music: they communicate an atmosphere, an experience
of archetypal human situations. The Absurd Theatre is a theatre of situation,
as against the more conventional theatre of sequential events. It presents a
pattern of poetic images. In doing this, it uses visual elements, movement,
light. Unlike conventional theatre, where language rules supreme, in the Absurd
Theatre language is only one of many components of its multidimensional poetic
imagery.
The Theatre of the
Absurd is totally lyrical theatre which uses abstract scenic effects, many of
which have been taken over and modified from the popular theatre arts: mime,
ballet, acrobatics, conjuring, music-hall clowning. Much of its inspiration
comes from silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense
in early sound film (Laurel and Hardy, W C Fields, the Marx Brothers). It
emphasises the importance of objects and visual experience: the role of
language is relatively secondary. It owes a debt to European pre-war
surrealism: its literary influences include the work of Franz Kafka. The
Theatre of the Absurd is aiming to create a ritual-like, mythological,
archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.
Some of the predecessors
of absurd drama:
- In the realm of verbal nonsense: François Rabelais,
Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Many serious poets occasionally wrote nonsense
poetry (Johnson, Charles Lamb, Keats, Hugo, Byron, Thomas Hood). One of
the greatest masters of nonsense poetry was the German poet Christian
Morgernstern (1871-1914). Ionesco found the work of S J Perelman (i.e. the
dialogues of the Marx Brothers' films) a great inspiration for his work.
- The world of allegory, myth and dream: The tradition of
the world as a stage and life as a dream goes back to Elizabethan times.
Baroque allegorical drama shows the world in terms of mythological
archetypes: John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Calderon, Jakob Biederman. With
the decline of allegory, the element of fantasy prevails (Swift, Hugh
Walpole).
- In some 18th and 19th Century
works of literature we find sudden transformation of characters and
nightmarish shifts of time and place (E T A Hoffman, Nerval, Aurevilly).
Dreams are featured in many theatrical pieces, but it had to wait for
Strindberg to produce the masterly transcriptions of dreams and obsessions
that have become a direct source of the Absurd Theatre. Strindberg,
Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Kafka created archetypes: by delving into their own
subconscious, they discovered the universal, collective significance of their
own private obsessions. In the view of Mircea Eliade, myth has never
completely disappeared on the level of individual experience. The Absurd
Theatre sought to express the individual's longing for a single myth of
general validity. The above-mentioned authors anticipated this.
Alfred Jarry is an important predecessor of the Absurd Theatre.
His UBU ROI (1896) is a mythical figure, set amidst a world of grotesque
archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal
nature of man and his cruelty. (Ubu Roi makes himself King of Poland and kills
and tortures all and sundry. The work is a puppet play and its décor of
childish naivety underlines the horror.) Jarry expressed man's psychological
states by objectifying them on the stage. Similarly, Franz Kafka's short
stories and novels are meticulously exact descriptions of archetypal nightmares
and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.
- 20th Century European avant-garde: For the
French avant-garde, myth and dream was of utmost importance: the
surrealists based much of their artistic theory on the teachings of Freud
and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious. The aim of the
avant-garde was to do away with art as a mere imitation of appearances.
Apollinaire demanded that art should be more real than reality and deal
with essences rather than appearances. One of the more extreme
manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the
desire to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some
Dadaist plays were written, but these were mostly nonsense poems in
dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to 'shock the bourgeois
audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to
project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of
Brecht's plays are close to Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their
music-hall humour and the preoccupation with the problem of identity of
the self and its fluidity. French surrealism acknowledged the subconscious
mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the
sphere of drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre
of the 1950s and 1960s was a Belated practical realisation of the
principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the 1930s. In this
connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of
Antonin Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a
vision of a stage of magical beauty and mythical power. He called for a
return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts
within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective
archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should
pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered
metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and
gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is incapable of
putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war
avant-garde and the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd.
THE THEATRE OF THE
ABSURD
THE WEST AND THE EAST
II. THE EAST
At the time when the
first absurd plays were being written and staged in Western Europe in the late
1940s and early 1950s, people in the East European countries suddenly found
themselves thrown into a world where absurdity was a integral part of everyday
living. Suddenly, you did not need to be an abstract thinker in order to be
able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of absurdity became part and
parcel of everybody's existence.
Hitler's attempt to
conquer Russia during the Second World War gave Russia a unique opportunity to
extend its sphere of influence and at the same time to 'further the cause of
[the Soviet brand of] socialism'. In the final years of the war, Stalin turned
the war of the defeat of Nazism into the war of conquest of Central Europe and
the war of the division of Europe. In pursuing Hitler's retreating troops, the
Russian Army managed to enter the territory of the Central European countries
and to remain there, with very few exceptions, until now. The might of the
Russian Army made it possible for Stalin to establish rigidly ideological
pro-Soviet regimes, hermetically sealed from the rest of Europe. The Central
European countries, whose pre-war political systems ranged from feudal
monarchies (Rumania), semi-authoritarian states (Poland) through to a
parliamentary Western-type democracy (Czechoslovakia) were now subjected to a
militant Sovietisation. The countries were forced to undergo a major traumatic
political and economic transformation.
The Western Theatre of
the Absurd highlighted man's fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stemming
from the fact that man has no answers to the basic existential questions: why
we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering. East
European Soviet-type socialism proudly proclaimed that it had answers to all
these questions and, moreover, that it was capable of eliminating suffering and
setting all injustices right. To doubt this was subversive. Officially, it was
sufficient to implement a grossly simplified formula of Marxism to all spheres
of life and Paradise on Earth would ensue. It became clear very soon that this
simplified formula offered even fewer real answers than various esoteric and
complex Western philosophical systems and that its implementation by force
brought enormous suffering.
From the beginning it
was clear that the simplified idea was absurd: yet it was made to dominate all
spheres of life. People were expected to shape their lives according to its
dictates and to enjoy it. It was, and still is, an offence to be sceptical
about Soviet-type socialism if you are a citizen of an East-European country.
The sheer fact that the arbitrary formula of simplified Marxism was made to
dominate the lives of millions of people, forcing them to behave against their
own nature, brought the absurdity of the formula into sharp focus for these
millions. Thus the Soviet-type system managed to bring the experience of what
was initially a matter of concern for only a small number of sensitive
individuals in the West to whole nations in the East.
This is not to say that
the absurdity of life as experienced in the East differs in any way from the
absurdity of life as it is experienced in the West. In both parts of the world
it stems from the ambiguity of man's position in the universe, from his fear of
death and from his instinctive yearning for the Absolute. It is just that
official East-European practices, based on a contempt for the fundamental
existential questions and on a primitive and arrogant faith in the power of a
simplified idea, have created a reality which makes absurdity a primary and
deeply-felt, intrinsic experience for anybody who comes in contact with that
reality.
To put it another way:
the western Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as the expression of frustration
and anger of a handful of intellectuals over the fact that people seem to lead
uninspired, second-rate and stereotyped existences, either by deliberate choice
or because they do not know any better and have no idea how or ability by which
to help themselves. Although such anger may sound smug and condescending, it is
really mixed with despair. And when we look at Eastern Europe, we realise that
these intellectuals are justified in condemning lives of mediocrity, even
though many people in the West seem to lead such lives quite happily and
without any awareness of the absurdity. In Eastern Europe, second-rateness has
been elevated to a single, sacred, governing principle. There, mediocrity rules
with a rod of iron. Thus it can be seen clearly what it can achieve. As a
result, unlike in the West, may people in the East seem to have discovered that
it is very uncomfortable to live under the command of second-rateness.
(The fact that
mediocrity is harmful to life comes across so clearly in Eastern Europe either
because East-European second-rateness is much harsher than the mild,
West-European, consumerist mediocrity, or simply because it is a single,
totalitarian second-rateness, obligatory for all. A single version of a simple
creed cannot suit all, its insufficiencies immediately show. This is not the
case if everybody is allowed to choose their own simplified models and
prejudices which suit their individual needs, the way it is in the West - thus
their insufficiencies are not immediately noticeable.)
The rise of the Theatre
of the Absurd in the East is connected with the period of relative relaxation
of the East European regimes after Stalin's death. In the first decade after
the communist take-over of power, it would have been impossible for anyone to
write anything even distantly based on his experiences of life after the
take-over without endangering his personal safety. The arts, as indeed all
other spheres of life, were subject to rigid political control and reduced to
serving blatant ideological and propagandistic aims. This was the period when
feature films were made about happy workers in a steelworks, or about a village
tractor driver who after falling in love with his tractor becomes a member of
the communist party, etc. All the arts assumed rigidly conservative, 19th-Century
realist forms, to which a strong political bias was added. 20th
-Century developments, in particular the inter-war experiments with structure
and form in painting and poetry were outlawed as bourgeois decadence.
In the years after
Stalin's death in 1953, the situation slowly improved. The year 1956 saw two
major attempts at liberalisation within the Soviet Bloc: the Hungarian
revolution was defeated, while the Polish autumn managed to introduce a measure
of normalcy into the country which lasted for several years. Czechoslovakia did
not see the first thaw until towards the end of the 1950s: genuine
liberalisation did not start gaining momentum until 1962-63. Hence it was only
in the 1960s that the first absurdist plays could be written and staged in
Eastern Europe. Even so, the Theatre of the Absurd remained limited to only two
East European countries, those that were the most liberal at the time: Poland
and Czechoslovakia.
The East European Absurd
Theatre was undoubtedly inspired by Western absurd drama, yet it differed from
it considerably in form, meaning and impact. Although East European authors and
theatre producers were quite well acquainted with many West-European absurd
plays from the mid to late 1950s onwards, nevertheless (with very few exceptions)
these plays were not performed or even translated in Eastern Europe until the
mid-1960s. The reasons for this were several. First, West-European absurd drama
was regarded by East-European officialdom as the epitome of West-European
bourgeois capitalist decadence and, as a result, East European theatrical
producers would be wary of trying to stage a condemned play - such an act would
blight their career once and for all, ensuring that they would never work in
theatre again. The western absurdist plays were regarded a nihilistic and
anti-realistic, especially after Kenneth Tynan had attacked Ionesco as the
apostle of anti-realism: this attach was frequently used by the East European
officialdom for condemning Western absurd plays.
Secondly, after a decade
or more of staple conservative realistic bias, there were fears among
theatrical producers that the West European absurd plays might be regarded as
far too avantgarde and esoteric by the general public. Thirdly, there was an
atmosphere of relative optimism in Eastern Europe in the late 1950s and the
1960s. It was felt that although life under Stalin's domination had been
terrible, the bad times were now past after the dictator's death and full
liberalisation was only a matter of time. The injustices and deficiencies of
the East European systems were seen as due to human frailty rather than being a
perennial metaphysical condition: it was felt that sincere and concerted human
effort was in the long run going to be able to put all wrongs right. In a way,
this was a continuation of the simplistic Stalinist faith in man's total power
over his predicament. From this point of view, it was felt that most Western
absurdist plays were too pessimistic, negative and destructive. It was argued
(perhaps partially for official consumption) that the East European absurdist
plays, unlike their Western counterparts, constituted constructive criticism.
The line of argument of
reformist, pro-liberalisation Marxists in Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s ran
as follows: The Western Theatre of the Absurd recorded the absurdity of human
existence as an immutable condition. It was a by-product of the continuing
disintegration of capitalism. Western absurd plays were irrelevant in Eastern
Europe, since socialist society had already found all answers concerning man's
conduct and the meaning of life in general. Unlike its Western counterpart,
East European absurd drama was communicating constructive criticism of the
deformation of Marxism by the Stalinists. All that the East-European absurdist
plays were trying to do was to remove minor blemishes on the face of the
Marxist model - and that was easily done.
It was only later that
some critics were able to point out that West European absurd dram was not in
fact nihilistic and destructive and that it played the same constructive roles
as East European drama attempted to play. At this stage, it was realised that
the liberal Marxist analysis of East European absurd drama was incorrect: just
as with its Western counterpart, the East European absurdist theatre could be
seen as a comment on the human condition in general - hence its relevance also
for the West.
On the few occasions
that Western absurdist plays were actually staged in Eastern Europe, the East
European audiences found the plays highly relevant. A production of Waiting for
Godot in Poland in 1956 and in Slovakia in 1969, for instance, both became
something nearing a political demonstration. Both the Polish and Slovak
audiences stressed that for them, this was a play about hope - hope against
hope.
The tremendous impact of
these productions in Eastern Europe can be perhaps compared with the impact of
Waiting for Godot on the inmates of a Californian penitentiary, when it was
staged there in 1957. Like the inmates of a gaol, people in Eastern Europe are
possibly also freer of the numbing concerns of everyday living than the average
Western man in the street. Since they live under pressure, this somehow brings
them closer to the bare essentials of life and they are therefore more receptive
to the works that deal with archetypal existential situations than is the case
with an ordinary Wes-European citizen.
On the whole, East
European absurd drama has been far less abstract and esoteric than its West
European counterpart. Moreover, while the West European drama is usually
considered as having spent itself by the end of the 1960s, several East
European authors have been writing highly original plays in the absurdisy
mould, well into the 1970s.
The main difference
between the West European and the East European plays is that while the West
European plays deal with a predicament of an individual or a group of
individuals in a situation stripped to the bare, and often fairly abstract and
metaphysical essentials, the East European plays mostly show and individual
trapped within the cogwheels of a social system. The social context of the West
European absurd plays is usually subdued and theoretical: in the East European
plays it is concrete, menacing and fairly realistic: it is usually covered by
very transparent metaphors. The social context is shown as a kind of Catch-22
system - it is a set of circumstances whose joint impact crushes the
individual. The absurdity of the social system is highlighted and frequently
shown as the result of the actions of stupid, misguided or evil people - this
condemnation is of course merely implicit. Although the fundamental absurdity
of the life feature in these plays is not intended to be metaphysically
conditioned - these are primarily pieces of social satire - on reflection, the
viewer will realise that there is fundamentally no difference between the
'messages' of the West European and the East European plays - except that the
East European plays may be able to communicate these ideas more pressingly and
more vividly to their audiences, because of their first-hand everyday
experience of the absurdity that surrounds them.
At the end of the 1960s,
the situation in Eastern Europe changed for the worse. After the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968, it became apparent that Russia would not tolerate a
fuller liberalisation of the East European countries. Czechoslovakia was thrown
into a harsh, neo-Stalinist mould, entering the time capsule of stagnating
immobility, in which it has remained ever since. Since it had been primarily
artists and intellectuals that were spearheading the liberalising reforms of
the 1960s, the arts were now subjected to a vicious purge. Many well-known
artists and intellectuals were turned into non-persons practically overnight:
some left or were later forced to lea the country.
All the Czechoslovak
absurdist playwrights fell into the non-person category. It is perhaps quite
convincing evidence of the social relevance of their plays that the establishment
feared them so much it felt the need to outlaw them. Several of the banned
authors have continued writing, regardless of the fact that their plays cannot
be staged in Czechoslovakia at present. They have been published and produced
in the West.
As in the 1960s, these
authors are still deeply socially conscious: for instance, Václav Havel, in the
words of Martin Esslin, 'one of the most promising European playwrights of
today', is a courageous defender of basic human values and one of the most
important (and most thoughtful) spokespersons of the non-establishment
groupings in Czechoslovakia.
By contrast, the Polish
absurdist playwrights have been able to continue working in Poland undisturbed
since the early 1960s, their plays having been normally published and produced
within the country even throughout he 1970s.
It is perhaps quite
interesting that even the Western absurd dramatists have gradually developed a
need to defend basic human values. They have been showing solidarity with their
East European colleagues. Ionesco was always deeply distrustful of politics and
the clichéd language of the political establishment. Harold Pinter, who took
part in a radio production of one of Václav Havel's plays from the 1970s
several years ago, has frequently spoken in support of the East European
writers and playwrights. Samuel Beckett has written a short play dedicated to
Havel, which was staged in France in 1984 during a ceremony at the University
of Toulouse, which awarded Havel an honorary doctorate.
Tom Stoppard, David
Lindsay-Abaire, John Guare, Caryl Churchill, and Gao Xingjian.
The Theatre of the
Absurd, or Theater of the Absurd (French: "Le Théâtre de l'Absurde") is a
designation for particular plays written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has
evolved from their work.
The term was coined by
the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a 1962 book on the subject. Esslin saw
the work of these playwrights as giving artistic articulation to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently without
meaning as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus. 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". According to Esslin, the four defining playwrights
of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov, although each of these writers has unique
preoccupations and techniques that go beyond the term "absurd". Other
writers often associated with this group include Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and Jean Tardieu.[1]
Tragicomedy
The mode of most
Absurdist plays is tragicomedy. Besides his multifaceted influence in other
areas, William Shakespeare, as the first great playwright to use
tragicomedy, is frequently cited as an influence on the Absurdists. This
influence is evidenced by Absurdist plays such as Ionesco's Macbett and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Though layered with a significant amount of
tragedy, other great forms of comedic performance are echoed heavily in the
Theatre of the Absurd, from Commedia dell'arte to Vaudeville. Likewise, early film comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, and Buster Keaton have been cited as direct influences (Keaton
even starred in Beckett's Film in 1965).
[edit] 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
Absurdists include the following: 19th century nonsense poets like Lewis Carrol or Edward Lear; the Russian Absurdists, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Erdman and so on; Bertholt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "Epic
Theatre"; and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg.[2]
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 utilized by Realism
and playwrights like Henrik Ibsen.[3] According to W. B. Worthen, Six Characters, and
other Pirandello plays, use “Metatheater—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a
flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly
theatricalized vision of identity.”[4]
Another influential
playwright was Guillaume Apollinaire whose Les Mamelles de Tirésias was the first work to be called
"surreal."
[edit] 'Pataphysics, Dadaism, and Surrealism
One of the most
significant common precursors is Alfred Jarry whose wild, irreverent, and lascivious Ubu
plays scandalized Paris in the 1890's. 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 (both Ionesco
and Arrabal 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.[5]
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.[6] 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 Zurich). Many of the Absurdists had direct
connections with the Dadaists and Surrealists. Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov, and
Arrabal for example, were friends with Surrealists still living in Paris at the
time including Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism. Also, Beckett
translated many Surrealist poems by Breton and others.[7][8][9]
[edit] Relationship with Existentialism
The Theatre of the
Absurd is commonly associated with Existentialism, 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.
Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre, the figurehead of Existentialism in Paris, but
few Absurdists actually committed to the philosophy, and many of the Absurdists
had a complicated relationship with Sartre. Genet's plays were praised by
Sartre -- for Genet "Good is only an illusion. Evil is a Nothingness which
arises upon the ruins of Good" according to Sartre[10]
-- but Sartre and Ionesco were at times bitter enemies. 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.[11] Sartre criticized Rhinoceros by saying,
"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."[12] This 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. With Samuel Beckett, for example -- whose relationship with Sartre
was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his stories in
Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes -- his primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome the
absurdity. As James Knowlson says in his biography of Beckett, Damned to Fame,
"his work [focuses] on poverty, failure, exile and loss -- as he put it,
on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er.'"[13]
[edit] History
The "Absurd"
or "New Theater" movement was originally a Paris-based (and Rive Gauche) 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, Boris Vian, and Romain Weingarten. Many other Absurdists were born elsewhere but
lived in France, writing often in French: Samuel Beckett from Ireland; Eugene Ionesco from Romania; Arthur Adamov from Russia; Fernando Arrabal from Spain, and so on. 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 there was Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, N. F. Simpson, James Saunders, and David Campton. In the U.S. there was Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Jack Gelber, and later John Guare. In Poland there was Tadeusz Różewicz, Sławomir Mrożek, and Tadeusz Kantor. In Italy there was Dino Buzzati and Ezio d'Errico. In Germany, Peter Weiss, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Günter Grass have written Absurdist plays. In India, both Mohit Chattopadhyay and Mahesh Elkunchwar were labeled Absurdists. Other international
Absurdists include Tawfiq el-Hakim from Egypt, Miguel Mihura from Spain, José de Almada Negreiros from Portugal, Yordan Radichkov from Bulgaria, and the list goes on. Future
Czech president Václav Havel is also considered an Absurdist playwright.
[edit] Major productions
Jean Genet’s The Maids (Les Bonnes) premiered in 1947. Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) was
first performed on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. Ionesco
followed this with "The Lesson" ( "La Leçon") 1951 and The
Chairs (Les Chaises) in 1952. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was first performed on the 5th of January 1953
at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. In 1956 Genet’s The Balcony (Le Balcon) was produced in London at the Arts
Theatre. The following year, Beckett’s Endgame was first performed, and that may Harold
Pinter’s The Room was presented at The Drama Studio at the University of
Bristol. Pinter’s The Birthday Party premiered in the West End and Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story premiered in West Berlin at the Schiller
Theater Werkstatt – both in 1958. On the October 28th of that year, Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in
London. Fernando Arrabal's Pique-nique en campagne (Picnic on the Battlefield) also came
out in 1958. Genet’s The Blacks (Les Nègres) was published that year but was first performed at
the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris on the 28th October, 1959. 1959 also saw the
completion of Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. Beckett’s Happy Days was first performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre
in New York on the 17th of September 1961. Albee’s Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also premiered in New York the following year,
on October 13th. Pinter’s The Homecoming premiered in London in 1964. Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade (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 Stoppard’s Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern Are Dead premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. Arrabal's Le
Cimetière des voitures (Automobile Graveyard) was also first performed in 1966.
Beckett’s Catastrophe -- which was dedicated to incarcerated Absurdist playwright and
Czech political figure Václav Havel – was first performed at the Avignon Festival
on July 21st, 1982.
[edit] Legacy
Echoes of the Theatre of
the Absurd can be seen in many later playwrights, from more experimental
playwrights like Susan-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 (who dedicated Glengarry Glen Ross to Harold Pinter).
[edit] Essential traits
Most of the bewilderment
absurdist drama initially created was because critics and reviewers were used
to more conventional drama: realism. In practice, The Theatre of the Absurd
departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated
theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and
even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or
nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like
moods. There is a fine line, however, between the careful and artful use of
chaos and non-realistic elements and true, meaningless chaos. While many of the
plays described by this title seem to be quite random and meaningless on the
surface, an underlying structure and meaning is usually found in the midst of
the chaos. According to Martin Esslin, Absurdism is “the inevitable devaluation
of ideals, purity, and purpose”.[14] Absurdist Drama asks its audience to “draw his
own conclusions, make his own errors”.[15] Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as
nonsense, they have something to say and can be understood”.[16] 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”.[17]
[edit] 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.[18] Many characters appear as automatons stuck in
routines speaking only in cliché (Ionesco called the Old Man and Old Woman in The Chairs “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 incomprehenisible. Many of
Pinter’s plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space
manaced 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 manaced by an outside
force is repeated in many of his later works (perhaps most famously in The Birthday Party). Characters in Absurdist drama may also face
the chaos of a world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco’s
reoccurring 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. 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).
[edit] 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[19]
-- make Theatre of the Absurd distinctive. Language frequently gains a certain
phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often
comedic playfulness. 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. This
exchange between Aston and Davies in The Caretaker 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 when Goldberg and McCann
torture Stanley with nonsensical questions:
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"...
[edit] 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 Soprano. 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. 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.
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.
The “Theatre of the
Absurd” is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of his 1962 book on the
subject. The term refers to a particular type of play which first became
popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which presented on stage the philosophy
articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in
which he defines the human condition as basically meaningless. Camus argued
that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying
rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the
world must ultimately be seen as absurd.
Esslin regarded the term
“Theatre of the Absurd” merely as a "device" by which he meant to
bring attention to certain fundamental traits discernible in the works of a
range of playwrights. The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the
absurd attempt to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in
the face of an inexplicable universe. According to Esslin, the five defining
playwrights of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, although these writers were not always
comfortable with the label and sometimes preferred to use terms such as
"Anti-Theater" or "New Theater". Other playwrights
associated with this type of theatre include Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, N.F. Simpson, Boris Vian, Peter Weiss, Vaclav Havel, and Jean Tardieu.
Although the Theatre of
the Absurd is often traced back to avant-garde experiments of the 1920s and
1930s, its roots, in actuality, date back much further. Absurd elements first
made their appearance shortly after the rise of Greek drama, in the wild humor
and buffoonery of Old Comedy and the plays of Aristophanes in particular. They were further developed in
the late classical period by Lucian, Petronius and Apuleius, in Menippean
satire, a tradition of carnivalistic literature, depicting “a world upside
down.” The morality plays of the Middle Ages may be considered a precursor to
the Theatre of the Absurd, depicting everyman-type characters dealing with
allegorical and sometimes existential problems. This tradition would carry over
into the Baroque allegorical drama of Elizabethan times, when dramatists such
as John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Jakob Biederman and Calderon would depict the world in mythological
archetypes. During the nineteenth century, absurd elements may be noted in
certain plays by Ibsen and, more obviously, Strindberg, but the acknowledged predecessor of what would
come to be called the Theatre of the Absurd is Alfred Jarry's "monstrous puppet-play" Ubu Roi
(1896) which presents a mythical, grotesque figure, set amidst a world of
archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal
nature of man and his cruelty. In the 1920s and 1930s, the surrealists expanded
on Jarry’s experiments, basing much of their artistic theory on the teachings
of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious mind which they
acknowledged as a great, positive healing force. Their intention was to do away
with art as a mere imitation of surface reality, instead demanding that it
should be more real than reality and deal with essences rather than
appearances. The Theatre of the Absurd was also anticipated in the dream novels
of James Joyce and Franz Kafka who created archetypes by delving into their own
subconscious and exploring the universal, collective significance of their own
private obsessions. Silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal
nonsense in the early sound films of Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the
Marx Brothers would also contribute to the development of the Theatre of the
Absurd, as did the verbal "nonsense" of François Rabelais, Lewis
Carroll, Edward Lear, and Christian Morgernstern. But it would take a
catastrophic world event to actually bring about the birth of the new movement.
World War II was the
catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd to life. The global
nature of this conflict and the resulting trauma of living under threat of
nuclear annihilation put into stark perspective the essential precariousness of
human life. Suddenly, one did not need to be an abstract thinker in order to be
able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of absurdity became part of the
average person's daily existence. During this period, a “prophet” of the absurd
appeared. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) rejected realism in the theatre,
calling for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest
conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce
collective archetypes and create a modern mythology. It was no longer possible,
he insisted, to keep using traditional art forms and standards that had ceased
being convincing and lost their validity. Although he would not live to see its
development, The Theatre of the Absurd is precisely the new theatre that Artaud
was dreaming of. It openly rebelled against conventional theatre. It was, as
Ionesco called it “anti-theatre”. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and
plotless. The dialogue often seemed to be complete gibberish. And, not
surprisingly, the public’s first reaction to this new theatre was
incomprehension and rejection.
The most famous, and
most controversial, absurdist play is probably Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The characters of the play are strange
caricatures who have difficulty communicating the simplest of concepts to one
another as they bide their time awaiting the arrival of Godot. The language
they use is often ludicrous, and following the cyclical patter, the play seems
to end in precisely the same condition it began, with no real change having
occurred. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as “the play where nothing
happens.” Its detractors count this a fatal flaw and often turn red in the face
fomenting on its inadequacies. It is mere gibberish, they cry, eyes nearly
bulging out of their head--a prank on the audience disguised as a play. The
plays supporters, on the other hand, describe it is an accurate parable on the
human condition in which “the more things change, the more they are the same.”
Change, they argue, is only an illusion. In 1955, the famous character actor
Robert Morley predicted that the success of Waiting for Godot meant “the end of
theatre as we know it.” His generation may have gloomily accepted this
prediction, but the younger generation embraced it. They were ready for
something new—something that would move beyond the old stereotypes and reflect
their increasingly complex understanding of existence.
Whereas traditional
theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it,
the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological,
archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams. The
focal point of these dreams is often man's fundamental bewilderment and
confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answers to the basic
existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is
injustice and suffering. Ionesco defined the absurdist everyman as “Cut off
from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots … lost; all his
actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” The Theatre of the Absurd, in a
sense, attempts to reestablish man’s communion with the universe. Dr. Jan Culik
writes, “Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore the importance of
myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of
his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and
primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out
of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt
that there is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human
condition.”
One of the most
important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust of language as a means of
communication. Language, it seems to say, has become nothing but a vehicle for
conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Dr. Culik explains,
“Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not being able to
penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and
foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and
insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised speech,
clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks
down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns, the
Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going
beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically.”
Absurd drama subverts
logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According to
Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to
abandon the straitjacket of logic. As Dr. Culik points out, “Rationalist
thought, like language, only deals with the superficial aspects of things.
Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the infinite.”
What, then, has become
of this wonderful new theatre—this movement that produced some of the most
exciting and original dramatic works of the twentieth century? Conventional
wisdom, perhaps, suggests that the Theatre of the Absurd was a product of a
very specific point in time and, because that time has passed, it has gone the
way of the dinosaur. In a revised edition of his seminal work, Martin Esslin
disagrees: “Every artistic movement or style has at one time or another been
the prevailing fashion. It if was no more than that, it disappeared without a
trace. If it had a genuine content, if it contributed to an enlargement of
human perception, if it created new modes of human expression, if it opened up
new areas of experience, however, it was bound to be absorbed into the main
stream of development. And this is what happened with the Theatre of the Absurd
which, apart from having been in fashion, undoubtedly was a genuine
contribution to the permanent vocabulary of dramatic expression…. [it] is being
absorbed into the mainstream of the tradition from which … it had never been
entirely absent … The playwrights of the post-Absurdist era have at their
disposal, then, a uniquely enriched vocabulary of dramatic technique. They can
use these devices freely, separately and in infinite variety of combinations
with those bequeathed to them by other dramatic conventions of the past.” In a
New York Times piece entitled “Which Theatre is the Absurd One?”, Edward Albee
agrees with Esslin’s final analysis, writing, “For just as it is true that our
response to color and form was forever altered once the impressionist painters
put their minds to canvas, it is just as true that the playwrights of The
Theatre of the Absurd have forever altered our response to the theatre.”
- The Theatre of the
Absurd
- The book by Martin Esslin that coined the term "Theatre of the
Absurd." Primarily deals with the five defining playwrights of the
movement: Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and
Harold Pinter.
- Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett's classic tragicomedy is known for
its lack of plot--"Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's
awful!" Two old tramps beneath a single tree make jokes to pass the
time and reflect on the state of human existence while they wait for
Godot--who never comes. A classic play of the absurd.
- Endgame - Beckett's second play. Whereas Waiting for Godot was
concerned with the theme of waiting, Endgame is on the subject of leaving,
on the necessity of reaching the door. We have the impression of watching
the end of something, the end possibly of the human race.
- Rhinoceros - Demonstrates Ionesco's anxiety about the spread of
inhuman totalitarian tendencies in society as the entire population of a
small, provincial French town turn into savage pachyderms.
- The Bald Soprano
and Other Plays
- A collection of short plays by Ionesco that contains such gems as The
Bald Soprano, The Chairs and Jack or the Submission.
- The Balcony - Influenced by the Theater of Cruelty, this play by
Jean Genet is set inside the Grand Balcony bordello, a brothel and
repository of illusion in a contemporary European city aflame with
revolution. After the city's royal palace and rulers are destroyed, the
bordello's costumed patrons impersonate the leaders of the city. As the
masqueraders warm to their roles, they convince even the revolutionaries
that the illusion created in the bordello is preferable to reality.
Tango - In this play by Slawomir Mrozek, a young man
who has grown up in a world without values stages a revolution to restore
order, only to discover that order cannot be
- imposed by force.
- Three Plays of the
Absurd
- In this collection of plays, Walter Wykes creates a series of modern
myths, tapping into something in the strata of the subconscious, through
ritualism and rich, poetic language. The worlds he creates are brand new
and hilarious, yet each contains an ancient horror we all know and cannot
escape and have never been able to hang one definitive word on.
- Le Ping-Pong - One of the few plays by absurdist playwright Arthur
Adamov available in English, Le Ping-Pong is a parable on the futility of
human endeavour. It tells the story of two young men who waste their lives
away in the futile attempt to build the perfect pinball machine.
- The Dumb Waiter - Reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, this play by
Harold Pinter concerns two hired killers waiting around for their next
assignment.
- The Birthday Party - Another play by Pinter, this one follows a young man
seeking shelter from a hostile world. Although he, at first, finds a sort
of safe house, two visitors from his old life soon track him down.
- Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern Are Dead
- Tom Stoppard weaves this fabulously
absurd tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play.
- Fuddy Meers - This play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who
the New York Observer calls "some kind of comic
genius," revolves around an amnesiac, Claire, who wakes up every
morning as a blank slate, on which her family must imprint the facts of
her life.
- The Homecoming - Pinter's tale of a man who takes his wife on a visit
to his childhood home where she becomes entangled in the family's
dysfunctional past.
- The Marriage - This play by Witold Gombrowicz is both a profound
expression of the shattered consciousness of postwar European culture and
a highly innovative, avant-garde treatment of the nature of personal
identity in a world where grimaces have replaced faces and reality itself
is accessible only in infinitely reflexive, theatrical posturing.
- The Other Shore - This collection of plays by Nobel
Prize-winning Chinese playwright Gao Xingjian illuminates the realities of
life, death, sex, loneliness, and exile with original imagery and
beautiful language.
Reading the Apocalypse
in Bed - Six astonishingly
radical plays and ten short pieces from Tadeusz Rozewicz, one of the most
important playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd to emerge from the aftermath
of World War II.
1.
Theater of the Absurd always has intense moments.
2. Theater of the Absurd can't look like conventional theater.
3. Theater of the Absurd has no start, no middle and no end.
4. Theater of the Absurd does not have a beginning, middle or end.
5. Theatre of the Absurd purpose is to provoke thought with laughter.
6. Constant reminders of reality in the weirdness.
7. Weird but have reality of it.
"In the end, it
can't look like acting."
