The theatre of the absurd ( ) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of theatre the plays represent. The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. The structure of the plays is typically a round shape, with the finishing point the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence.The Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Millennium Edition, Helicon 1999.
Origin Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "The Theatre of the Absurd", which begins by focusing 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." The French philosopher Albert Camus, in his 1942 work The Myth of Sisyphus, describes the human situation as meaningless and absurd.
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. This style of writing was first popularized by the Eugène Ionesco play The Bald Soprano (1950). Although 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".
In his introduction to the book Absurd Drama (1965), Esslin wrote:The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. 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 see it. But the challenge behind this message is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world. 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.
Etymology In the first edition of "The Theatre of the Absurd", Esslin quotes the French philosopher Albert Camus's essay "The 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."Camus, Albert. Le Mythe de Sisyphe (paris: Gallimard, 1942), p.18Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Vintage (May 7, 1991) p. 2
Esslin presents the four defining playwrights of the movement as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet, and in subsequent editions he added a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter.Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961). (Subsequent references to this ed. appear within parentheses in the text.)Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage [Knopf], 2004). (Subsequent references to this ed. appear within parentheses in the text.) Other writers associated with this group by Esslin and other critics include Tom Stoppard,Terry Hodgson. The plays of Tom Stoppard: for stage, radio, TV and film.Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. , . p.181. Friedrich Dürrenmatt,Joel Agee. Dürrenmatt, Friedrich: Friedrich Dürrenmatt.University of Chicago Press, 2006. , . p. xi Fernando Arrabal,Felicia Hardison Londré, Margot Berthold. The history of world theater: from the English restoration to the present. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999. , . p. 438 Edward Albee,Barbara Lee Horn. Edward Albee: a research and production sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. , . pp. 13, 17 29, 40, 55, 232. Boris Vian,Neil Cornwell. The Absurd in Literature. Manchester University Press ND, 2006. . p. 280. and Jean Tardieu.
Precursors Tragicomedy The mode of most "absurdist" plays is tragicomedy.Esslin, pp. 323–324J. L. Styan. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, 1983 , p. 125 As Nell says in Endgame, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness … it's the most comical thing in the world".Samuel Beckett. Endgame: a play in one act, followed by Act without words, a mime for one player. Grove Press, 1958. . pp. 18–19. Esslin cites William Shakespeare as an influence on this aspect of the "absurd drama".Esslin, pp. 321–323 Shakespeare's influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbett and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre", "Comedy alone is suitable for us … But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of which the tragic arises."Friedrich Dürrenmatt. "Problems of the Theatre". The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi. Grove Press, 1964. . pp. 30–31.
Though layered with a significant amount of tragedy, theatre of the absurd echoes other great forms of comedic performance, according to Esslin, from Commedia dell'arte to vaudeville.Styan, p. 126 Similarly, Esslin cites early film comedians and music hall artists such as Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops and Buster Keaton as direct influences. (Keaton even starred in Beckett's Film in 1965.)Esslin, p. 325
Formal experimentation As an experimental form of theatre, many theatre of the absurd playwrights 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;Esslin, pp. 330–331 Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz;Esslin, pp. 382–385 the Russians Daniil Kharms,Neil Cornwell. The absurd in literature. Manchester University Press ND, 2006. . p. 143. Nikolai Erdman,John Freedman. The major plays of Nikolai Erdman: The warrant and The suicide. Routledge, 1995.. xvii. and others; Bertolt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "epic theatre";Esslin, pp. 365–368 and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg.J. L. Styan. The dark comedy: the development of modern comic tragedy. Cambridge University Press, 1968. . p. 217.
One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello, especially Six Characters in Search of an Author.Annette J. Saddik. Ed. "Experimental Innovations After the Second World War". Contemporary American Drama.Edinburgh University Press, 2007. . p. 28 Pirandello was a highly regarded theatrical experimentalist who wanted to bring down the fourth wall presupposed by the realism of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen. According to W. B. Worthen, Six Characters and other Pirandello plays use "metatheatre—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly-theatricalized vision of identity".Worthen, p. 702
Another influential playwright was Guillaume Apollinaire whose The Breasts of Tiresias was the first work to be called "surreal".Allan Lewis. "The Theatre of the 'Absurd' – Beckett, Ionesco, Genet". The Contemporary Theatre: The Significant Playwrights of Our Time. Crown Publishers, 1966. p. 260Rupert D. V. Glasgow. Madness, Masks, and Laughter: An Essay on Comedy. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1995. . p. 332.Deborah B. Gaensbauer. The French theater of the absurd. Twayne Publishers, 1991. . p. 17
Pataphysics, surrealism, and Dadaism 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, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician)Jill Fell. Alfred Jarry, an imagination in revolt. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2005. . p. 53 was inspirational to many later absurdists, some of whom joined the Collège de 'pataphysique, founded in honor of Jarry in 1948Esslin, pp. 346–348 (Ionesco,Raymond Queneau, Marc Lowenthal. Stories & remarks.U of Nebraska Press, 2000 , . pp. ix–x Arrabal, and VianDavid Bellos. Georges Perec: a life in words : a biography. David R. Godine Publisher, 1993. , . p. 596 were given the title "transcendent satrape of the Collège de 'pataphysique"). The Theatre Alfred Jarry, founded by Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac, housed several absurdist plays, including ones by Ionesco and Adamov.Esslin, p. 373.Cornwell, p.170
In the 1860s, a gaucho author established himself as a precursor of the theater of the absurd in Brazilian lands. Qorpo-Santo, pseudonym of José Joaquim de Campos Leão, released during the last years of his life several theatrical works that can be classified as precursors of the theater of the absurd. However, he is little known, even in his homeland, but works such as "Mateus e Mateusa" are gradually being rediscovered by scholars in Brazil and around the world.
Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" (presented in 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.Antonin Artaud The Theatre and Its Double. Tr. Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958., pp. 15–133.Styan, Modern p. 128Saddik, pp. 24–27. Artaud was a surrealist, and many other members of the surrealist group were significant influences on the absurdists.Esslin, pp. 372–375.Mel Gussow. Theatre on the edge: new visions, new voices. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1998. . p. 303.Eli Rozik. The roots of theatre: rethinking ritual and other theories of origin. University of Iowa Press, 2002. . p. 264.
Absurdism is also frequently compared to surrealism's predecessor, Dadaism (for example, the Dadaist plays by Tristan Tzara performed at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich).Richard Drain. Twentieth-century theatre: a sourcebook. Routledge, 1995. . pp. 5–7, 26. Many of the absurdists had direct connections with the Dadaists and surrealists. Ionesco,Eugène Ionesco. Present past, past present: a personal memoir. Da Capo Press, 1998. . p. 148.Lamont, pp. 41–42 Adamov,Esslin, p. 89Justin Wintle. Makers of modern culture. Routledge, 2002. . p. 3 and ArrabalC. D. Innes. Avant garde theatre, 1892–1992.Routledge, 1993. . p. 118. for example, were friends with surrealists still living in Paris at the time including Paul Eluard and André Breton, the founder of surrealism, and Beckett translated many surrealist poems by Breton and others from French into English.James Knowlson. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. London. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997. , p. 65Daniel Albright. Beckett and aesthetics.Cambridge University Press, 2003. . p. 10
Relationship with existentialism