THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

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THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
Samuel Beckett
Tom Stoppard
Albert Camus
Harold Pinter
Eugène Ionesco
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Albert Camus (The Myth of Sysiphus, 1942)

• A world that can be explained by reasoning,
  however faulty, is a familiar world.But in a
  universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions
  and of light people feel strangers. They are
  irremediable exiles because they are deprived of
  memories of a lost homeland as much as they lack
  the hope of a promised land to come.This divorce
  between people and their lives,the actor and his
  setting, truly constitues the feeling of
  absurdity.

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Eugene Ionesco(Dans les arms de la ville, an
essay on Kafka)

• Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose
• Cut off from his religious , metaphysical
  transcendental roots, man is lost, all his
  actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

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Loss of meaning the world appears frightening
as it is illogical
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Historical Philosophical Backgound

• Waning of religious feeling
• Breakdown of the liberal faith in an inevitable
  social progress after WW1
• Relapse into barbarism, mass murder genocide in
  the course of hitlers brief ruleover Europe
  during WW2

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• Disillusionment with the hopes of a radical
  social revolution as predicted by Marx after
  Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a
  totalitarian tyranny
• The spread of spiritual emptiness in the
  outwardly prosperous affluent societies of
  Western Europe and the USA

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Cultural Roots

• Mimus()Greek/Latin Drama)
• Ritual Drama
• Allegorical Symbolic Drama (e.g. Morality Plays
  or autos Sacramental)
• Dream Nightmare Literature
• Tradition of Fools Mad scenes in Drama (e.g.
  Shakespeares tragedies)
• Pantomime Music Hall
• Nonsense poetry
• Commedia dellarte

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No Communication

• Loss of Meaning gt the language is devoid of
  meaning
• What happens on the stage transcends and often
  contradicts the words spoken by the characters
• The characters talk ( use the language )to fill
  the emptiness between them

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• In a universe that seems to be drained of meaning
  the pompous laborious attempts at an
  explanation we call philosophy or politics must
  appear as empty chatter
• In a world that has become absurd the theatre of
  the absurd is the most accurate reproduction of
  reality

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Martin Esslin (from Absurd Drama)

• A well made play.
• The characters are well observed convincingly
  motivated
• Dialogue is witty logically built up

• An Absurdist Play
• The characters are hardly recognizable human
  beings, their actions are completely unmotivated.
• Dialogue seems to have degenerate into
  meaningless babble

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• Beginning-middle-ending clearly recognizable
• It is primarily concerned to tell a story or
  elucidate an intellectual problemIt can thus be
  seen as a narrative or discoursive form of
  communication
• Result Final Message
• DYNAMIC

• It starts at an arbitrary point seems to end as
  arbitrarily
• It is intended to convey a poetic image os a
  complex pattern of poetic images it is above all
  a poetic form
• It conveys a central atmosphere
• STATIC

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• The action goes from point A to point B we
  constantly ask Whats going to happen next?
• Conditioned by clear , comforting beliefs, a
  stable scale of values, an ethical system in full
  working conditions

• Action gradual unfolding of a complex pattern
  .We ask What is it that we are seeing?
• Absurdist playrights no longer believe in the
  possibility of of a neat resolution they express
  a sense of wonder , incomprehension, despair at
  the lack of cohesion and meaning they find in
  the world

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• There is no faith in the existence of a rational
  and well ordered universe
• Sense of shock at the absense , the loss of any
  such clear well defined system of beliefs
  values

• Politics
• Religion
• Implicit belief in the goodness perfectibility
  of people
• Unthinking acceptance of the moral political
  status quo
• Implicit idea that the world does make sense,
  reality is secure , all outlines clear, all ends
  apparent