Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a dramatic movement that was made up of many diverse plays, most of which were written between 1940 and 1960 by certain European and American dramatists who agreed with the Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’s assessment, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose. When first performed, these plays shocked their audiences as they were startlingly different from the conventional plays produced prior to this. In fact, many of those plays were labeled as “anti-plays" as not only it seemed to lack the structural cohesion that used to characterize the earlier plays that were staged but also the characters perform frantically and their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. This style of writing was first popularized by the Eugène Ionesco play The Bald Soprano (1950). 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 extensive were some of its characteristic aspects, with either a parody or dismissal of realism that underlie the concept of the "well-made play" .
Coinage of the term: Critic Martin Esslin, in an attempt to clarify and define this radical movement,coined the term in his 1960 essay "The Theatre of the Absurd", He defined it
" absurd" as all of the plays emphasized the absurdity of the human condition. We tend to use the word “absurd” synonymously with “ridiculous", as the actions ( or inactions) taken by the characters can not resonate anything ''reasonable" . Esslin referred to the original meaning of the word– ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; illogical’. He focuses on the playwrights Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, and Eugène Ionesco. Esslin says that their plays have a common denominator—the "absurd", a word that Esslin defines with a quotation from Ionesco: "absurd is that which has no purpose, or goal, or objective."In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin quotes the French philosopher Albert Camus's essay "Myth of Sisyphus", as it uses the word "absurdity" to describe the human situation: "In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. … This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity."
Background : The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and the communication breaks down. Critics do believe that Theater of the Absurd arose as a movement from the doubts and fears surrounding World War II and the consequent shattering of the traditional, moral and political values and attacks as Esslin wrote in his introduction to the book Absurd Drama (1965), the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. The decline of religious faith in the Twentieth Century is partly responsible for the growing notion that life had no identifiable purpose. Esslin notes that this decline was “masked until the end of the Second World War by the substitute religions of faith in progress, nationalism, and various totalitarian fallacies”. Whereas one who believes in the afterlife, sees life as a means of getting there; one who does not believe that, is left to either conclude that there is no purpose or to find an alternative justification for his/her life. These plays put forward a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a world which has no meanings, which has no definitives and therefore, the shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation to accept the sense that there is no such thing as a " happy ending ".
It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers perceive and represent and we,too, along with them, move,doubt, act, react and eventually laugh at the quest for meaning and the futile endeavor to find truth.
Precursors of Absurdism: 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." 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 Macbett and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Absurd playwrights often employ 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 Carroll or Edward Lear; Bertolt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "Epic theater";and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg mark its importance in breaking off the conventional play performances.
One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello's 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 and his " well made plays". Six Characters uses the technique of Metatheatre, in which through roleplaying and plays-within-plays a highly-theatricalized vision of reality is criticized and the binaries between author/ director, characters / actors are seen to be entangled.
A precursor is Alfred Jarry whose 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, pataphysician (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician)was inspirational to many later Absurdists.
Themes and representations: The Theatre of the Absurd examines the fundamental absurdity of choosing to live one's life normally when confronted with an uncaring and meaningless universe. Absurdist plays contextualize these two aspects of existence, presenting the characters as either behaving routinely in absurd situations, or behaving absurdly in routine situations, or any combination of the two. While Theatre of the Absurd is, by definition, absurd, themes of futility, anxiety and isolation are commonly present throughout these works.
Theatre of the Absurd actively rejects conventional notions of narrative and a well aligned plot —--- a clear beginning and end with a purposeful development in between and opting instead for chaotic and seemingly nonsensical plots.There is usually a great deal of repetition in both language and action, which suggests that the play isn’t actually “going anywhere.” In Waiting for Godot, the stage directions indicate that Vladimir and Estragon are constantly moving. For example, they repeatedly “rummage” through their pockets and “peer” into their hats. These actions are so frequent, however, that the audience begins to feel as if they are watching the same thing over and over again. They could even be called static actions as they contribute nothing to the flow of the play.
The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces.These ideas that inform the plays also dictate their structure. Absurdist playwrights, therefore, did away with most of the logical structures of traditional theater.Time and space are typically mutable, ill-defined, or absent. Many plays are cyclical, ending at the same place they began, such as in the case of Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano or Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with all preceding action either disregarded, forgotten, or rendered irrelevant. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence. Language, too, in an Absurdist play is often dislocated, full of cliches, puns, repetitions, and non sequiturs.
Characters may react to certain statements or events with uncharacteristic levity or gravity or disregard cause-and-effect altogether. However, the characters perform frantically, their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952), in a timeless universe emerge two lost creatures, Vladimir and Estragon, usually played as tramps, spend their days waiting—but without any certainty of whom they are waiting for or of whether he, or it, will ever come.Though they have each other, they are at the same time isolated from one another. One indication of this is that they are never able to adequately communicate; their conversation goes in circles, emphasizing the isolation of the individual, or man’s inability to connect with others.The characters in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano (1950) sit and talk, repeating the obvious until it sounds like nonsense, thus revealing the inadequacies of verbal communication. The ridiculous, purposeless behavior and talk give the plays a sometimes dazzling comic surface, but there is an underlying serious message of metaphysical distress.
The Absurd plays typically demonstrate how traditional human rationality and expectations have gone awry in a world of chaos. They often begin from the point of familiarity for the audience, such as Estragon and Vladimir's evocation of the classic vaudevillian double-act in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot or the use of the pre established Shakespearean characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This establishment of familiarity is either immediately or steadily subverted, challenging the audience's understanding of theatrical and narrative norms and confronting them with a dramatic representation of life's inherent absurdity. By the narrative's conclusion, the audience is typically left with a sense of uncertainty, prompting them to examine their own lives for examples of absurdity and existential confusion.
Above all, the absurd dramatists sought to reconcile man with the modern world. Esslin eloquently states that “the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions–and to laugh at it” . The absurd dramatists were the first to propagate this idea of acceptance in the face of absurdity. In doing so, they not only challenged the preconceptions of what does and does not constitute theater, but also redefined the art form and created a space in which succeeding movements could flourish.
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